This Is Now
by busaikosensei
Summary: Todoroki Shoto will be a hero... But not just yet. (Gen, Shoto centric, semi-canon compliant canon-rewrite. Full summary inside) PLEASE READ THE WARNINGS! R&R much appreciated!
1. The Beginning

Summary: Todoroki Shoto will be a hero... But not just yet. Right now, Todoroki Shoto is a bitter, pessimistic, hurt teenager who doesn't want help, friends or hinderances of any kind getting in the way of his misguided goals. Thankfully, there will soon be people in his life who will be more than happy to drag him into a place of happiness, safety, and acceptance - kicking and screaming the whole way, if they have to. All he has to do is survive his first meeting with them and all the incredible changes that will come after. This is Todoroki Shoto's Hero Academia.

A/N: And here we have the start to my longest multi-chaptered fic and my debut into this fandom. If you're here for the first time, welcome! The first fic in this series is _That Was Then, _which will become relevant later on. This fic is basically the definition of 'it gets worse before it gets better'; it's gonna be all hurt and no comfort for quite a bit. It DOES get better, though, and will have a heap-ton of Dadzawa and class 1-A being awesome people. This is a semi-canon compliant canon re-write with Shoto as the main character; it is also entirely Gen, and will AT MOST hint at slash/het relationships. This fic will also contain (blanket WARNING): **child abuse, spousal abuse, swearing, an unreliable narrator, suicidal ideation, dissociation, an unspecified eating disorder, PTSD, self-harm, and depression**. Please mind the warnings and backspace if these are things you don't want to read about. If you find anything I'm writing offensive for legitimate reasons, please be respectful when you inform me, because I am thin-skinned and have low self-esteem.

This chapter has **self-harm**, though it isn't explicit. Please take care of yourself, and backspace if this is too much for you!

Disclaimer: I own nothing

* * *

_Mom reaches out a hand and gestures at the window. _

_"It's a beautiful day outside, Shoto. How do you feel about a picnic?" _

_Shoto turns; looks outside. Cumulonimbus clouds shift and make way for Nimbostratus, swollen, dark clouds rolling over and into each other like someone has pressed a finger against the sky and put it all on fast-forward. _

_He looks back, and Mom smiles. _

_"Come, Shoto. Don't you want to see?" _

_Thunder crashes. Grey skies are briefly illuminated by trailing fingers of lightning. _

No,_ he mouthes at her, the shape of the words lost in a crash of thunder. She takes his hand in hers, tugs him. They move down the hall on silent feet, past the white _shoji_ doors with their golden flowers and elegant cranes in flight. Where there were walls, there are now windows, floor to ceiling; the lightning stretches their shadows long and dark across the ground as they walk past them, slow and silent. _

_They reach the door. Mom holds a picnic basket in her arm, he sees. She has on her favorite summer dress, with its vibrant floral print and delicate pastels. Her straw hat won't protect her from the harshness of the storm, but when Shoto tries to tell her, she smiles down at him from under the brim of her hat—warm, like the real, full strength of the summer sun—and the words die in his throat. _

_"It'll be just like old times, sweetie! Just you, me and all the creepy crawlies!" she says cheerfully. They slip into sandals—little golden slips for her, _geta _for him—and they open the door. _

_Outside in the garden, the red emperor maple by the koi pond (the one that gains a thick crimson coat of leaves every autumn) is on fire. _

_"What a lovely day," Mom says. She pulls him again, and he goes, but he only goes because he has no choice. _

Mom, don't_, he says, but branches crackle and creak, leaves burning and scattering ashes over his words, and the sounds are lost in the wind. _

_Mom pulls them closer, closer. _

_"It was a bit too hard to pack _zaru-soba_, so you'll have to make do with sandwiches for now! I'll ask Saito-san about making some for dinner, shall I?" _

_With a great crackling bang, a large branch breaks off under the unrelenting heat; Shoto looks up and realizes that, somehow, they are directly below it. _

Mom,_ he says with his frozen mouth. She looks up at the stormy sky, smiling beatifically, blind to the danger. _

_The branch breaks completely... and falls. _

MOM!

Shoto jolted awake, to the sound of loud banging on his door and the strident trill of his snooze alarm.

"Shoto, if you're not up in the next five minutes, you can forget about breakfast!" a most unwelcome voice called, pulling at the foggy hand clinging to his mind.

The scowl that slipped onto his face felt like it was made to be there, which didn't do much for his burgeoning bad mood. Shoto scrubbed at his face, hoping to brush off the last dregs of sleep, and took the deep breath he needed to drag himself out of bed.

Next: trudge to the shower; five minutes under cold water, a quick toweling off; teeth-toilet-clothes; one-two-three second reflection check, to ensure the bruises are all hidden.

Another day had begun.

Over breakfast, Todoroki Enji tutted and complained about current events as he shoveled down bowls of rice and fish and soup and _natto _like the fire of his quirk was burning every morsel the second they hit his stomach. Todoroki Fuyumi nodded occasionally to give the illusion of a listening ear, while her eyes never left the mackerel she was carefully dissecting with her chopsticks.

Todoroki Shoto, ignoring his father's grimace of disgust, crunched obnoxiously on milk-less cereal and drank green tea. The petty joy of being able to get under Father's skin so early in the morning did wonders for his mood (and also helped him ignore the fact that bran cereal, eaten without milk and with only unsweetened green tea to wash it down, was disgusting).

Mrs. Saito (their housekeeper, half-deaf and completely ignorant of anything that went on outside the boundaries of her job) took his empty bowl with an equally empty smile, and toddled off to the kitchen as he scooted out from under the low table, making sure to knock his knees against the table-top as noisily as he could manage.

"Shoto," Father began, a hint of fire in his voice.

"School," Shoto cut him off sharply, already turning his back. It was always safer to have one foot out the door, these days. "I'll be late."

"Be safe," Fuyumi said, her voice as fragile and soft as a light snowfall in spring. Shoto lifted a half-hearted hand to wave and closed the door behind him.

Bag, check; tie, check; uniform and shoes, check.

The driver opened the door and bowed as he stepped inside. The stone boundary separating the Todoroki family home from the rest of the world also served to block out the rising sun, and Shoto stared out the windows as the gates slowly opened and let the light in.

"We'll be arriving at the school gates in approximately one hour and twenty minutes, young master. Would you like me to put on music for you? Jazz, perhaps?"

"No," Shoto said curtly. The seatbelt dug into his stomach, making him regret the time he'd spent in that suffocating room, shoveling down food he hadn't wanted, and which he'd kept down only by a large helping of spite.

"Just get us there in time."

"As you wish."

* * *

U.A.'s gleaming glass panels reflected the sun in swaths of warm gold. Shoto looked away the moment it came into view, blinking at the overwhelming brilliance of it.

"We're here," the driver said. "If you would wait for just a moment, I'll get the door for you."

"No, that's alright_—_" Shoto started to say, but as the doors automatically slid open and the driver left this seat, finished half-heartedly under his breath: "…I can get it myself."

"Have a wonderful day, young master Todoroki," the man (what was his name again?) said, his body bent at the perfect seventy-five-degree angle as he saw Shoto on his way. "I will be by to pick you up after school ends."

Shoto stepped onto the sidewalk, ignoring but not oblivious to the many looks being cast his way, and waved the driver off.

"Later."

Even when walking at what should have been an even, slow pace, Shoto made it a habit to stalk at a speed just below a trot: it had the double effect of being both intimidating and guaranteed to have anyone in front of him scattering at first glance.

He walked down the halls this way, up three flights of stairs and through another hall (and through a group of girls who gave him half-frightened, half-excited looks as he brushed between two of them, purposely oblivious to anything but his goal), past classrooms 1J-1B, until he reached his soon-to-be-classroom.

The door was large; obviously, they had taken into consideration the possibility that one day (Shoto imagined they hoped it would be someday, very far away) they would get a student tall enough to necessitate it. Perhaps they had created it in All Might's day. Shoto could imagine someone watching the budding hero in action, then getting the inexplicable urge to create an entrance big enough to warrant someone whose reputation would be almost too big to fit through it, one day.

Then he shook off his wandering thoughts, aware enough to realize and acknowledge that he was stalling. Then he pulled open the massive door.

It was surprisingly light. Shoto rolled the door shut behind him with an absent thought for its make and materials.

"And heeeeeeeere's our number five! Told you we'd get a boy next!"

_(Tired, mismatching eyes tracked movement outside the window. Pink petals flew and fluttered about, ecstatic in their rise and languid in their fall. A few fell gently to rest on the window still, adding to the pile slowly building up to create Spring's idea of piles of autumn leaves. _

_Through the glaring reflection of fluorescent lights on glass, the flying petals, and the occasional leaf, the track team tensed on their running blocks. At the low crack of the starting gun—still audible even on the third story—the runners took off. Shoto followed them around their course with tired eyes, distantly noting that blue 4 would be overtaken by yellow 16 at the next turn. _

_"—Due to extenuating circumstances, Todoroki-kun will only be joining the class on Wednesdays and Thursdays, but please do your best to make him feel welcome! Todoroki-kun, would you like to introduce yourself?" _

_Todoroki tore his eyes away from the window long enough to give a terse introduction, a short bow and to take one-two-three-four steps to his new desk. Then his gaze was once again outside, through the glass and past the petals, to watch the little people on the ground go round and round and round. He watched, and did his best to ignore the sudden rise in whispers around him. _

_He wasn't entirely successful. _

_"Ooh, it's a boy! Told you we'd get a boy." _

_"Aw man, that's so unlucky. 3F got a cute girl last month__—__" _

_"I hear he got in on a recommendation, like, his family must be really loaded__—__" _

_"Loaded? Dude, don't you know who that IS?" _

_"What, you mean _that _Endeavor's—" _

_"Did you see his scar? Phew, nasty. Wonder how he got it-" _

_"__—__If I had something like that on my face, you bet I would be covering that shit up__—__" _

_"__—__Did you hear him? What a douche. 'It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.' Like, who even talks like that, you know?" _

_"But he can't really be THAT endeavor's son, can he?" _

_"__—__Endeavor's son__—__"_

_"__—__Todoroki__—__" _

_The little figures went round and round and round, and Shoto closed his eyes and pretended the words entering his ears weren't doing the same in endless, dizzying circles.)_

The hand still touching the door—his right side—briefly frosted the surface as a jolt of surprise shuddered through his body. He had his hand at his side in the next instant, any sign of surprise hidden behind a blank mask.

The loud pronouncement had come from a girl with a fluffy head of riotous pink curls. Her yellow eyes (made all the brighter by her black sclera) looked him over curiously, her pink-skinned arms raised over her head from where she had thrown them up at his entrance.

She and another student (hair blond, a streak of black through it but no other defining features) sat on top of opposing desks, one row down from the door. As Shoto slowly navigated his way to the back of the classroom, his eyes went to the three other students sitting at random desks about the room.

A student with an avian, crow-like head (sleek black feathers, reflecting blue in the neon light, and a sharp yellow beak to go with striking yellow eyes) glanced up from what looked like quiet introspection as Shoto headed towards his seat. They (he?) gave a nod in greeting as he stepped past him, a greeting that Shoto returned coolly with a bare tilt of his head. Shoto's seat was just behind him.

(It had been included in the rule book, hadn't it? That the uniforms were not cisgender specific, owing to the many diverse genders that had arisen along with the new generation of quirk users; but that, due to tradition, the inclusion of skirts in the uniform for those identifying as 'female' had been made mandatory. Shoto wondered at the necessity or even purpose of it… then asked himself why he cared, and pushed the thought away.)

"Aw man, where are the girls? Don't tell me this is how it's gonna be for the next three years! No offense, Ashido, Yao-ah, Yaoyorozu, was it?"

"None taken."

_Yaoyorozu_.

Shoto looked up from his bag as the name rang a bell in his head. He eyed the girl who had spoken. She sat across from his desk on his left-hand side, her posture perfect, body language uncomfortable and subdued. Her black hair was tied up in a neat ponytail, and she had a serious, if polite, look on her face. Her name sounded familiar, but he couldn't place—

Ah. That was it. She was the other recommendation student in his class.

_("Tch, another recommendation?" Father flipped through the folder in his lap and grunted with displeasure. Shoto pressed his chin further into his hand and glared hard at the window, his lips in a tight line. He didn't respond. _

_"The Yaoyorozu Family has done plenty of good work for society as a whole, it cannot be denied; but who's to say their child will amount to anything? What Heroes need to succeed in this day and age-" _

_The test would be a simple written test, according to the introduction packet. The word of Endeavor, the pro-hero, was enough to set his third—and youngest—son a step above the rest. Shoto stared hard at the cars, people and buildings whizzing past them, in an attempt to erase the sight of his father's mouth moving in the glass's reflection, spitting out useless words and wasting the oxygen in the vehicle. _

_"—you will, of course, stand above them all. As a Todoroki, you have a duty to your family—" _

_If only it were possible to drown out sound the way one could close their eyes. Shoto shut his eyes then, imagining it: his eardrums shuttering closed at the slightest hint of that man's voice; inner-ear-lids to keep out all the words and empty noise that tried to drill themselves into his brain; better yet, a kill switch, to burst his eardrums on command. Perforated eardrums healed easily enough, if you were careful about it—Shoto knew that one from experience. _

_If there were such a thing as that kill switch, Shoto would have happily flipped it right that second. Then he could close his eyes, his ears and his brain, and dream of somewhere different. Better. _

_The car rumbled, passing objects blurred with motion, and their destination and the start of Shoto's new life drew closer. Shoto let the rhythm of the car and the gentle movement pull him into a quiet place in his mind where there was nothing at all.) _

Shoto hadn't actually spoken to his fellow recommendation students during their entrance test. He had passed her (or someone that looked quite a bit like her) in the halls, but had been ushered into a separate examination room and hadn't given it a second's thought.

Now he avoided eye-contact as Yaoyorozu Momo glanced in his direction, because what would be the point of speaking to her? In the end, what they had in common would amount to the same thing as his neighbor's pet Pomeranian having a matching accessory as him on its collar. How she had gotten here, to Hero class 1-A, would not have any say in her success as an actual hero—and was, more importantly, irrelevant: because Shoto didn't actually care.

"Man, no way! There's gotta be more girls joining than that! I mean, wouldn't that be, like, discrimination? Sexism? Being confused, because this is supposed to be a coed school?"

"Dunno if it's sexism… I mean, it's got to do with how you scored right? They can't just choose some random girl over a guy who scored higher than her, even if the class ends up uneven. That'd be some real discrimination there."

The fourth student in the room had also kept quiet up until this point, though he had half-turned in his chair, and appeared to be listening rather intently to the conversation. Shoto gave him his own intent look in return. This person's quirk had some very interesting physical characteristics.

Large eyes in a face that, in comparison to his body, was rather small, this student had three arms—each attached to the other by what looked like webbing, almost like bat wings—on each side of his large torso. He wore a large mask over his face, and one of his three hands on the left side was in the shape of an… ear?

Shoto found himself curious, in a detached sort of way. Hands had a tendency to find themselves in the oddest of places: a careless gesture could knock over a jar, for instance, shattering it and creating a lot of noise; a victory high-five could miss, and end up smacking someone in the mouth; a ringed hand, raised in anger, might catch on skin, tearing it open and leaving a gaping wound. Hands were difficult things to control; what would happen if he were to, say (though the thought was rather crass), use the restroom? That 'ear' at the end of his arm could end up being very problematic.

"Good morning! I am Iida Tenya, and I will be training with you all from now on, in the hopes of becoming the best hero I can be! I am very excited to see what we can accomplish!"

The words crashed straight through his deliberations with all the subtlety of a train wreck. With deliberate slowness, Shoto dragged his eyes up to the outstretched hand in front of him, already feeling tired. His eyes swiftly categorized what they saw: short-cropped black hair, glasses, a stern face in squared lines that practically screamed 'earnestness'—the quintessential try-hard. He appeared to have made his rounds already, if the half-stunned looks on the other student's faces were any indication, and now it was apparently Shoto's turn.

_No, thank you. _

"...same to you," he said dismissively after a moment, without introducing himself or bothering to shake the outstretched hand. Shoto had better things to do than cater to overachievers, particularly ones like this, who practically oozed sincerity. A few other greetings echoed through the classroom, some sounding more confused than others: apparently, Shoto had been one of the few to even notice the guy entering the room.

(Although Shoto had only noticed him entering the room peripherally, 'Iida' hadn't exactly been subtle about his entrance, which didn't say much at all for his classmates' collective intelligence or situational awareness.)

Thankfully, Iida retracted his hand without further fanfare and immediately launched himself into the conversation Shoto had been deliberately distancing himself from.

"Discrimination… I do not believe it would be considered discrimination, as such. From what I have heard, the teachers at UA are given much leeway with the curriculum and what is and isn't allowed in regard to the students. Apparently expelling students is a common punishment? With that knowledge, it seems reasonable to assume that picking and choosing prospective students would be within their power, irrespective of those students' genders! This is, of course, under the assumption that the teachers themselves have any say in the selection process."

_("What a snob. 'It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.' Like, who even talks like that, you know?") _

Everyone nodded along like this made sense, and Shoto found his already waning interest fade entirely. Giving up bothering to appear engaged altogether, Shoto looked away and back to his opened bag.

Pencil case; lined notebooks; textbooks; electronic dictionary; thermos; lunch box; phone. Shoto mechanically sorted through his belongings and put each where they belonged. Every movement ached and burned at overused muscles, and bruises layered on top of bruises.

Endeavor had not gone easy on him over the weekend. Apparently, being a Hero was, 'hard, painful, under-appreciated work', and he should be, 'glad for the free experience'.

Shoto nearly snorted at the thought, but held it in (barely) when he recalled both where he was, and also that he had either badly bruised or cracked a rib on his right side, and laughing would be a very unpleasant experience.

"What about you, number five?"

He didn't look up at the words, but it was a near thing. Shoto tried, in most of his interactions with people outside his own household, to exude an air of unapproachableness that might make an interested person stop, for a moment, from a sort of sixth sense that _this _person, you didn't want to approach.

(This, he had learned from _him_: that walk, of utter belief in one's own superiority; that look on his face, echoes of his inflated sense of self-worth easily visible at a glance; the sharp disinterest in his voice, an easy way to gauge where you fell in his expectations, if you even fell within them at all.)

Apparently, his fellow students either didn't have anything resembling sixth sense, or they were just terrible at reading body language. Or both. Probably both, Shoto thought. He shrugged one shoulder (his left) and dragged his chair forward with a foot as he went to sit down.

A beat, then: "Eh? Come on, shortcake, you've got to have more of a reaction than that!"

This, Shoto did respond to. His red and white hair, bisected neatly down the middle between the two colors, shifted smoothly back from his face as he looked up, tilted his head back slightly (the better to look down his nose at them all) and gave his coldest glare.

To the blond's credit, he may be completely lacking in self-preservation, but he at least had the guts to not visibly flinch back. Or the stupidity. (It was probably the stupidity.)

What an idiot.

"Are you an idiot?" he stated more than asked. The boy gave a nervous, high-pitched laugh, while the pink one blinked at him and coughed awkwardly.

"Uh... I don't think so?"

"I'll just go about arbitrarily assigning nicknames for all of you, then, shall I?" he asked softly, calm but with a sinister edge, the way Father would get when he was setting up a verbal noose for you to walk into. It didn't have quite the same punch as it did when Father did it, but the idiot did go a shade paler.

Not a total idiot, then.

"Before we have done more than exchanges greetings—which I don't recall even bothering with, in your case—should I decide what sort of person you are, based on first impressions or appearance? I don't think you would enjoy the epitaphs I come up with, then."

He could say more, and he wanted to. He could let the fraying edges of his temper snap, letting the lingering pain in his bones and the aggravation creeping into his brain overtake his common sense; common sense that was even now shouting at him that these were his future allies, and alienating them before anything had even started could have a bad effect on his future as a hero. He could ignore his good sense and tear them all apart with the sharp edge of his tongue, the way Endeavor had torn into him last night when Shoto had let him throw him about the training room rather than use the hateful left-side of his quirk—

"Perhaps an apology would be appropriate at this point, Kirishima-kun," Crow Head spoke up unexpectedly, adding a deep baritone to the proceedings and jarring Shoto out of his deepening spiral.

"Yeah, shit, okay. Sorry, short-uh, um. What's your name again?"

He blinked slowly up at the other boy, then absently moved his fingers to trace down the spine of a blue notebook on his desk: blank, except for a neatly penned 'Math 1' on the cover. Why did names have such power? He wondered. Why did the human race put such stalk in having categories and labels and appellations for everything? Would it be so terrible for everyone to just—wander about, to go about their lives as a blank canvas, with no title or name?

"Todoroki Shoto," he said eventually, eyes drifting down to the dark blue lines. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Yaoyorozu jolt and half-turn towards him. No doubt her mouth would be opening on a question, that one question he had been hoping to avoid hearing for as long as possible. No doubt, if he looked up, the others would also be looking at him, surprise—shock, trepidation, maybe confusion—on their faces.

(This_ was the son of the Number Two Hero, Endeavor? _They would say.

…_This?)_

"I'm Kaminari Denki! My quirk's called 'Electrification' which is basically exactly what it sounds like… but what I mean to say is—sorry. That wasn't cool."

This made him look up, the notebook forgotten.

The boy had hopped off the desk and turned his back on Pinky (who kept shooting him concerned looks, and Shoto uncertain ones) to slouch his body in Shoto's direction. With his hands in his pockets, his hair standing up riotously from his head and with earphones dangling down one shoulder, he should have come off as indolent and defiant, but the look in his eyes was anything but.

Shoto blinked once, twice, three times. His face felt as frozen as the ice always there, hiding under the surface of his skin, and his fingers twitched to release it.

"My sister says I'm always running my mouth and that's why people think my quirk's burning through all my brain cells—"

Pinky winced, and dryly cut in, "Wow, no offense Kaminari, but your sis is kind of a bitch—"

"—But like, I didn't mean anything by that, I just didn't know what to call you, and it slipped out before I could stop it. Start again?" 'Kaminari' finished apologetically. He dogged the tables separating them and offered his hand.

This time, though he again took a moment to think it through, Shoto took the hand, as briefly as he could manage. Then he pulled it back swiftly, resisting the urge to rub through the sudden tingling feeling running over his skin. The thought of looking up was very difficult, suddenly, and making eye contact was even harder.

"I… accept your apology," Shoto said. The words felt as awkward in his mouth as they did leaving it, but the smile that he got in reply was nearly blinding.

"Great! I'm glad we, ah, worked that out."

Shoto nodded blankly into the space the boy had left as Kaminari skipped back to his seat and threw himself on top of his desk.

Iida, whose general attitude Shoto thought he already had a pretty good handle on, objected quite fiercely to this move, shouting: "Kaminari-kun! That is an inappropriate way to be treating school furniture! As a future hero, even something as seemingly insignificant as treatment of property—"

"You're one of the other recommendation students," Yaoyorozu said to him in an undertone. She had turned in her seat to face him and was lightly wringing her hands in her lap. She seemed rather timid, but the uncertain-but-determined look on her face told Shoto he wouldn't be able to get away with ignoring this one.

His skin still tingled where Kaminari had shaken it. Shoto hid his hands under his desk and gave in to the urge to rub at them.

"Yes," he replied shortly. He looked up at the clock situated above the blackboard: 8:15.

It had only been fifteen minutes; fifteen more to go.

The restless energy caused by the stress of talking (coupled with yesterday's terrible training and compounded by being unexpectedly forced to socialize) threatened to be too much. The rubbing turned to scratching, and Shoto quickly found himself catching the words coming out of Yaoyorozu's mouth in brief snatches:

"_—_Missed you at written exam. My... mentioned another applicant... accepted, but I wasn't aware...the son of... great things... incredible act of heroic..."

The clock _tick-tick-tick-tick-ticked_.

BANG.

The sound of the door slamming open brought reality flickering back into full color. Yaoyorozu, who had been in the middle of saying something, jerked her head to the door in shock.

Shoto had marked each student as they came into the door, because even while preoccupied or drifting, his father's—the Number Two Hero, Endeavor's—training had taught him the importance of always being aware of your surroundings. The room was nearly full, and out of the eighteen students in the room, all but Shoto had flinched back at the sound.

(Situational awareness, honestly…)

The boy who entered the room—no, that wasn't right: the boy who stalked to the front of the room, smug aggression in every swagger and every line of his smirk, screamed of someone who was used to being the center of attention and was quite happy to be there. Sharp, blond spikes matched a sharp jawline, and rounding it all up were glaring red eyes that took in everything around them in an instant.

This was someone who could potentially be a problem, and most definitely an annoyance. Shoto scratched at his arm and felt a moment of relief when, upon turning to him and opening her mouth, Yaoyorozu apparently reconsidered striking up the conversation for a second time.

The new boy plopped himself down in one of the few remaining desks (three rows from the door, one table down from the front) and immediately put his feet up.

"You! You shouldn't be putting your feet there-"

_Tick-tock, tick-tock_. 8:26 turned, excruciatingly slowly, to 8:27. Shoto pulled out his phone and began reading Hero Daily.

**'Up and coming Pro-Hero Break-a-Leg has a bad run-in with Villain: Commercial-Schism'**

**'Where Is All Might and What Is He Up To?'**

**'The disappearance of Villain: Buffalo Jill'**

He scrolled down restlessly, looking for something interesting enough that would work as a fully-immersive distraction.

**'Emergence of a new Villain: the Hero-Killer**_—_

"It took you all eight seconds to shut up. If I had been a villain, you'd all be dead by now. You aren't here to make friends, so stop chattering and sit down."

8:30. Shoto thought that their teacher was punctual, if nothing else. He appeared to be in a bright yellow sleeping bag, of all things, though he was quick to step out of it and start pulling out gym clothes (somehow, there was enough for everyone. Was his quirk a pocket dimension, perhaps?). They weren't going to the Entrance Ceremony, apparently; their teacher had something else in mind.

School was not turning out to be quite how he had imagined it would go, based on his limited experiences in private school education.

Shoto scratched his hand one last time before turning his phone on silent and slipping it into the side-pocket of his bag. He then tried to push aside the drowsiness and the discomfort, and focus.

He was here to become the greatest, and to prove his father—and Endeavor—unequivocally wrong in all the ways that mattered. These people, with their physical gestures and flapping mouths, were nothing more than unfortunate obstacles in his path, and he would not allow them to make him stray from his.


	2. Know Your Limits

A/N: The **child abuse** is very present in this chapter. Please mind the warnings!

Disclaimer: I own all of my insecurities and not much else.

* * *

Quirk testing, huh.

After Aizawa-sensei (Aizawa Shota, or Aizawa-sensei as he ordered them to call him) handed them their uniforms and left them to change, they were ushered out to one of U.A.'s many outdoor running tracks. Shoto eyed his fellow students as their homeroom teacher explained what they would be doing.

His own experiences with private education, outside of the tutoring he had received at home for most of his life, hadn't included physical tests. With Endeavor? That had been a weekly occurrence. Shoto knew his times with running, walking, tossing, jumping-throwing-kicking-punching; his fire remained a mystery, but his ice he knew down to the last atom. He had gotten and was still receiving full-body checks weekly from the family doctor (who was apparently being paid enough, or had so few morals, that he looked past the burns and bruises like they weren't even there), who was mostly kept available to patch him up after bad sessions.

How Aizawa-sensei planned to test their quirks was something he could admit to being curious about—

_BOOM-WHUUUSH_.

Aizawa-sensei looked down at the device in his hand, before pointing the screen in their direction. "705.2 meters. Knowing your limits is the first, rational step to finding out what sort of hero you have the potential to become."

_("You are BETTER THAN THIS!"_

_Shoto flew into the wall as he failed to block the kick, catching the foot to his stomach full-force. Upon landing, he immediately vomited, coughing on bile as his empty stomach protested at having to lose its meager contents for the fifth time in as many hours._

_"This is NOT YOUR LIMIT! Once you become a hero, you'll run into countless situations where the villains have the upper hand, where you've been beaten into a corner, where you're outnumbered, near to collapsing and your quirk overloaded. That is exactly the moment when you must get back up and FIGHT! Will you let your weakness, your inability to man up and keep fighting, be your excuse for failure? Not on my watch, boy. Get up, Shoto! On your feet!"_

_Shoto gagged on stomach acid one last time. Getting to his feet was torture, but the anger churning in his gut gave him the tiniest spark of energy he needed to heave himself to his feet._

_"Find your limit, meet your limit, then burn right on past it! Your destiny calls for you to be the best, boy, but how can you be the best when you can't even stay on your feet? Again!")_

Limits.

Shouto knew his limits, intimately. He became reacquainted with them each time Endeavor dragged him to the edge of them, then over; when he was coughing up blood into the crook of his elbow, but getting up the next second, because failure was worse than any potential training program could ever be; when all he wanted to do was curl up into a ball and disappear, but he had to stand tall and fight back, because showing weakness to Endeavor was like releasing blood into an ocean teeming with sharks.

Speaking of sharks, a boy—with sharp-looking teeth like that of a shark and bright red hair—chose that moment to begin rubbing his hands together, nearly elbowing his neighbor (a boy with a large, pale-skinned tail that looked to be all muscle) as he loudly commented that the test seemed like fun.

Shoto felt his upper lip curl up into a sneer. Fun? What was fun, when everything they could possibly learn in the next three years may be the one thing that would, at some point in their careers, save their lives, and approaching it all like a game was a sure-fire way to miss that one important piece?

As his classmates stood around him, talking and laughing with a general air of excitement exuding from the lot of them, Shoto felt momentarily as if he stood alone in the middle of a room of people, all talking around him—about him, at him—but never with him. It was as isolating as it was exhilarating, because Shoto was reminded again of how his childhood had molded him in a way these children would never have the fortune (or misfortune) to experience.

(What was fun, when you were gagging on your own blood, when you were tripping and falling onto your face and having to drag yourself up under your own power because nobody would help you—because you were going to be better, be the best, and once you were at the top, you stood alone.)

Shoto was grimly satisfied to see that Aizawa-sensei was of the same mind: when a few more students started to boast and express their general excitement over the potential 'fun', their Sensei's tired eyes narrowed, and his whole demeanor took on a dark, sinister air that sent his classmates (and if he was honest, himself as well) into a collective shiver of dread.

When Aizawa-sensei announced (with a terrifying smile of sadistic glee) that the one with the lowest times would be expelled, Shoto had a sudden, very strange thought:

_Would it be so bad, if I was failed out?_

The next moment, a wave of heart-stopping dread swept through him, leaving him scrambling to control full-body shudders, glad his classmates were making such a racket that his strange behavior was unlikely to be noticed.

_No_. No. If he failed now, after coming all this way, it would be like signing his own death warrant. Though even he had to acknowledge that it was unlikely Father would outright kill him (though he couldn't say the same for Endeavor), what he would be subjected to would doubtless make him long for death instead.

Failing was not an option. Shoto looked about him at his classmates and felt his heartbeat pick up at the way each innocent face suddenly looked like a threat.

There, that boy, the one who kept interspersing his speech with odd, foreign-sounding words: what secrets were his strange syntax hiding? There, the girl with the floating clothes and wildly gesturing hands: what shocking talent could be hiding within her invisible form? What of that student, the one with the purple balls for hair? Could their quirk be a miraculous physical change, one that would give them the musculature they were so obviously lacking, therefore giving them an unexpected boost at the eleventh hour?

Thankfully, rational thought prevailed after a few wild seconds and reminded Shoto that he had trained and trained entirely for the sake of coming out on top in competitions like these. Short of deliberately failing, he was unlikely to fall below the top three.

The trembling subsided, and Shoto took a steadying breath and moved along with his classmates to begin the exercise.

So Shoto doggedly competed alongside his fellow students in the 50-Meter-Dash, the Grip Strength test, the Standing Long Jump and Repeated Side-steps, all of them exercises Shoto had a vague familiarity with and had full confidence in his ability to pass with flying colors.

It took him a bit of time to notice, but when he did, Shoto was mildly surprised to realize that, in spite of putting only a moderate amount of effort into actually competing, he was staying rather more ahead of the pack than he had originally anticipated.

His right side wasn't entirely suited to a lot of the exercises, but where his quirk didn't come in handy, his training did:

For the 50-Meter-Dash, an explosion of ice behind his back threw him far enough that upon landing, all he had to do was drop into a roll and come up at the finish line, to finish at 4.7 seconds.

For the Grip Strength, he managed a decent 60 kilograms—still behind a few of the students with a strength-augmenting type quirk, but still easily in the top five.

For the Standing Long Jump, another quick burst of his quirk sent him high and smoothly over the sandbox, without once touching the ground.

For the Repeated Side-steps, the often repetitive nature of his training with his father kicked in. The absence of the pain usually present in his training had the added effect of making every jump smoother, each landing easily blending into the next movement, the next jump, to the point where Shoto was almost surprised when Sensei called time.

It was at the ball toss that things got really interesting.

When Shoto's turn arrived, Shoto… cheated, a little bit (if making his father happy, and himself vaguely ill, could be considered cheating):

Once standing in the circle, Shoto spent a good, careful few minutes simply running through the calculations in his mind (ignoring the gradual build in his classmates' whispering, and in his teacher's interest). During that focused period of thought, Shoto wavered between his left hand and the right, before finally switching to the right and telling himself that it was okay, just this once, because if it was for his future it was _okay_,_ itwouldbeokay_—

When he'd stalled long enough that Shoto deemed his classmates to be getting too restless, Shoto drew his left arm back, and let heat form, setting his hand aglow. Wind immediately began to gather as he pulled oxygen to his hand, but didn't yet touch on hydrogen; when the wind began to grow strong enough to toss up the corners of his blazer and send his hair flying, Shoto tossed the ball into his glowing left hand, drew back, aimed, and gathered hydrogen and the spark that would ignite his flames as he let the ball fly.

The resulting explosion sent the ball flying, _probably_ didn't destroy it in the process, and nearly knocked a few of the students on their backs.

As for himself, Shoto stumbled, only slightly, and somehow managed to keep both upright and his face straight, and to not immediately set about clawing at the buzzing sensation running through his entire left side. When the device beeped, and Aizawa-sensei showed him and the class the results (722.3 meters) Shoto thought he saw an approving look in his eye. His success nearly balanced out the desire to run out of there, right now, and find a shower to scrub the skin off his entire skeleton, just, get every itching, tingling millimeter of it off—

But what was really interesting was what came next.

As Shoto stood waiting with the other students for the remaining three to finish their turns (and doing his best to avoid touching anyone without appearing like he was doing so, which was a lot harder than it sounded), the brown-haired girl who'd shown up second-to-last the first day (her name had a 'U' in it, that much he was sure of) drew her arm back, tensed, and threw.

And the ball went up, and up, and up. And up.

The device beeped, and Aizawa-sensei looked down at it before raising his eyebrows in surprise. He pointed it in their direction, and there was a collective inhale of shocked-awe.

"Infinity?" someone blurted out.

"No way! She got the infinity symbol? Is that even possible?"

"So cool…"

She stepped back out of the circle, shy pleasure in the lines of her body. Shoto looked her over subtly as she walked his way, a contemplative line between his brows. She stepped into line not very far down from him, and he took the chance to take a guess at her specs; the results were average, at best, and he pressed into his left hip with his thumbnail, contemplative.

Gravity manipulation, huh? That was certainly a useful quirk. Off the top of his head, he could think of two-dozen practical applications for hero work with a quirk like that, even taking into consideration what her limits might be. Rescue, apprehension, all-out fights—having the ability to take away someone's gravity was an excellent ace in the hole.

If she spent the next three years bringing up the rest of her physical specs, the pro-hero agencies would be fighting at the bit to get their hands on her.

Suddenly, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Tensing, but not knowing quite why, Shoto snapped his head around to face the direction the feeling had come from—what he had caught out of the corner of his eye: Aizawa-sensei's off-white scarf was floating around his head, to match his rising hair and the menacing look in his suddenly bright-red eyes, reminiscent of his declaration to expel the lowest ranked student.

Shoto found himself wanting to take a step back, and that look wasn't even aimed at him. He tensed all of his muscles in the next instant, freezing his body in the harshest way he knew, to keep himself from giving in to the temptation to show such blatant weakness. Some of his fellow students weren't quite as disciplined, and few of them gasped as they flinched back.

"That's the Pro-Hero Eraserhead!"

"Eraserhead? Never heard of him…"

"He sounds kind of familiar though? I feel like I've heard his name come up on tv before—"

"I think I've heard of him too! He's an underground hero, I'm pretty sure!"

He found himself, for the first time in a long time, feeling intimidated by an adult other than Endeavor. It wasn't quite the same fear (that bone-deep dread, that instinctive full-body flinch away from the slightest hint of contact, eyes that always went straight to large, calloused hands the second the man entered the room) but it was something like it. A healthy fear, perhaps, if there was such a thing, that could turn to respect given time.

For now, Shoto kept a wary eye on his teacher's hair until it finally floated downwards as he let go of his quirk. The green-haired student he had wrapped in his scarf (which Shoto was beginning to suspect wasn't a scarf at all) was let loose in an instant, and any sign of the intimidating hero they had all gotten the smallest glimpse of disappeared, leaving behind a scruffy, tired—and above all, bored-looking man in his place.

Shoto's attention lingered on Aizawa-sensei for another moment, feeling oddly disappointed; but he shrugged the feeling off a moment later, and mentally categorized the thought as irrelevant.

The student geared up to deliver his throw, this time with his Quirk. Shoto felt a sudden flare of interest as the boy's quirk caused a massive burst of power, almost familiar in a way Shoto couldn't place, and sent his ball shooting into the sky and out of sight.

A curiously strong quirk. Shoto wondered why the boy hadn't bothered to use his quirk before now. He didn't stand out in Shoto's memory in any of the previous tests, which said a lot about how he had faired up until this point. It was interesting that he had only chosen the final test to showcase his true power—

The boy grinned at Sensei, pain in his eyes, and a purple, oddly-bent finger clenched in one trembling fist.

—_Ah_. That made sense. If utilizing his quirk caused such serious injury every time, it was no wonder he'd chosen to first try his best without it.

The air coalesced in one spot at the edge of his vision. Shoto instinctively leaped to the side, and luckily managed to dodge a student—the one with purple balls for hair—as they fell, screeching, from the force of the explosion the blond boy with anger-management issues let out as he lunged towards the green-haired student... a student who was currently nursing a broken finger and a terrified expression.

As the blond went hurtling at the hapless boy, hands popping countless explosions and yelling at the top of his lungs, he was thankfully stopped, halfway there, by Sensei's mysterious scarf. Shoto scooted inconspicuously away from a still-screeching Purple Balls, and did his best to hide his disgusted looks at the both of them. His side begged to be freed of the insufferable tingling, and Shoto indulged it with a quick, brutal jab with blunt fingernails.

"What the—the _fuck_ is… this! This cloth is stiff!"

"That scarf you're failing to get out of is called a 'capture weapon', brat, and its made of carbon fibers and a special steel-alloy wire," Aizawa-sensei explained dryly, looking exasperated and on the edge of fed up. "Now stop using your quirk already, I'm getting dry-eye over here."

The boy finally stopped struggling, and Sensei released him with a sigh.

"What a waste of time. Do that again, and I'll fail you. Let's move on to the next event."

Shoto obediently moved with the crowd, using the time to mentally sift through all the things of note that he had learned about his classmates and ranking them all in order of Most Dangerous, to Least (Sensei, of course, made the top of that list). A girl with long, dangling earlobes brushed against him as she moved past, and he glanced after her as they moved towards Auditorium 3, trying to recall seeing her in the classroom. He kneaded the skin of his upper arm as they were split up to finish the exercises, and let the vague thought drift past him.

To round off the exercises, they did two more: the Seated Toe-Touch and Sit Ups. For both the exercises, Shoto again fell into the top three. While the boy with four-winged, tentacle-like growths attached to his arms (the boy that Shoto had made note of in the classroom) had easily five times Shoto's muscle mass, Shoto had eleven years of painstaking blood-sweat-and-tears behind him, and that history helped to put them at nearly even rank.

Anger-Management Issues kept pace with him for the final two rounds, as well. It was possible that he'd been there from the start, but Shoto had, frankly, not cared enough to notice. Now that he had a certain awareness for his fellow student, beyond the fact that he was someone to keep an eye on in the future and to avoid with extreme prejudice, he was very aware of the furious looks being sent in his direction as Shoto managed to finish just a step or two higher than the boy in both exercises.

(Shoto, of course, ignored this, and made sure not to make eye contact or acknowledge him in any way at all.)

When the timer beeped for the final time, Aizawa-sensei called them all together to announce the rankings.

It was hard not to feel a smug sense of superiority as AMI seethed and quietly swore under his breath next to him when Shoto's name appeared above his, to rank Second over-all ("Whoa, Bakugo, you got Third, huh? Your quirk is really so cool!" "_Fuck off_, dick head!"). After a moment's thought, Shoto realized he had no real reason not to, and so he allowed himself to bask in the smugness for a few minutes, letting the feeling temporarily wash away the sting of, once again, failing to achieve number one.

No doubt that would hit him hard, later, when he had the time and the privacy to really think about it; if Endeavor found out about this, that 'hitting' would no doubt manifest in an entirely physical way. But for now, Shoto let AMI's glare roll over him as Sensei announced that, actually, no one was getting expelled because it had all been a logical ruse, and his classmates again erupted into unnecessarily loud exclamations.

His left side throbbed and ached, phantom fire burning under his skin and begging to be released. Shoto did his level best to his burrow his way into his ribcage with the heel of his palm, determined not to let the burning overwhelm him, and imagined soft, powdery snow, piling up and up and up until there was nothing left in the world dry enough to burn.

And so the first day of his Hero Highschool Academy life began, and ended, in a short-half day that had been completely unpredictable and so unlike what he had been expecting, Shoto was actually happy, for once, to see the family estate appear in the car's front windows as the sun slowly set behind them.

All in all, for a day that had started so horribly, it had not gone nearly as terribly as Shoto had expected.

(…Or so Shoto thought, until he stepped through the house and found what awaited him there.)

* * *

_Tap, tap. Tap-tap. tap. Taptap._

Shoto looked up from his phone at the sound. He turned his nightlight on to its lowest setting, flipped the covers off his legs and shuffled to the door, fighting a yawn.

He knocked once on the wooden doorpost, quietly, before sliding open the shoji door just-wide enough to let a slim person pass through. Fuyumi slipped through the gap a second later, her socked-feet silent on the wood paneling of the hallway floor, and barely raising a rustle on the tatami.

(_He's__ asleep. Come in, yes/no?_ Her knock had said.

_Yes_, his had said simply in reply.)

He slid the door closed the rest of the way, careful to be slow enough that it wouldn't tap too loudly against the door frame at the end. Then he followed Fuyumi to his laid-out futon bed and folded his legs into a crisscross next to her.

Fuyumi turned to face him once he had sat down, their knees nearly touching. The shadows cast by the lamp darkened the hollows of her face, making her look nearly gaunt, and terribly drained. But she smiled at him, and most of the shadows, imagined or otherwise, were chased away.

"Congratulations, Shoto," she whispered, ever mindful of the way sound could carry, even in the privacy of his bedroom, "you got through your first day! I'm sorry I wasn't able to see you when you got home, I heard you had a half-day?"

"Hn," Shoto grunted, too tired to bother forming words. That half-day had given Father the idea that if he had the time to train, then he _obviously_ must have the necessary energy for it. That had resulted in a four-hour beat-down where Shoto had learned a half-useful skill, failed to keep standing in the face of the Number Two Hero's quirk, failed to satisfy his father, and overused his quirk to the point of quirk exhaustion.

All in all, not a terrible outcome for a training session. He just hadn't been expecting to have a lesson at all, which was his first mistake. Somehow, he'd been under the strange impression that, as he would now be going out in public on a regular basis and actually being in the same room as a number of pro-heroes throughout the week, Father would let up on the training, at least during weekdays. He had been under this unfortunately mistaken assumption when he allowed the driver to open the car door for him, his mood acceptably mellow enough not to bother arguing. The contented peace that had settled after the successful morning shattered abruptly the second he slid open the shoji doors to the main sitting room, to find Father sitting at the table, an empty cup of tea and snack plate before him, having obviously been waiting for him for quite some time.

The man had been careful not to mark his face, at least—Shoto would give him that. Still, it was hard to feel grateful like he probably should, not when his ribs sent shooting pain through his side with every ill-thought movement and his whole left side stung with healing frostbite, shivers from near-hypothermia shaking his whole body periodically.

The pain served to make the exhaustion twice as heavy, and it was with great effort that Shoto forced his eyes and his focus to stay alert long enough to find out what his sister wanted.

Fuyumi, like she always had, was quick to notice his predicament. Her smile, for a moment, turned sad, before she visibly rallied herself and resolved not to comment.

Shoto appreciated that, immensely. It was going to be hard enough getting out of bed tomorrow with the way his body felt; he didn't need the added mental weight.

"I promise to make this quick," she murmured reassuringly. She picked up something from next to her that rustled quietly against the bedspread, and placed it gently in his lap.

"Congratulations on getting through your first day, and for making into U.A., Shoto."

He touched the package in his lap delicately. It was wrapped in soft, powdery blue wrapping paper with little black paw prints winding round and round it in random patterns. Shoto followed the path of the prints for a moment, before delicately beginning the process of unwrapping it, going slow so as to keep the noise down.

The paper unfolded to reveal a picture frame, and for a moment, the world froze.

Two eyes—one piercing blue, one dark gray—traced the faces in the images with a desperate urgency: a boy, no older than ten, messy white hair cut short, leaning against a wall with a sly grin on his face; a girl, equally-white hair shot through with red and a hand covering her mouth, her eyes smiling brightly as she bent nearly in half with the force of her amusement; another boy, this one with crimson hair, eyes squinted shut with laughter as he pulled his arms tight around the small person sitting in his lap. Heterochromatic-eyes found matching ones in a small boy, hair split evenly down the middle—one side red, the other white.

The boy in the picture with matching eyes had on an earsplitting grin, one that seemed to take over his whole face. He looked happy. They all… looked happy.

Shoto blinked, once, twice. Something wet dripped onto the laminated surface of the picture, blurring it and all the faces in it until it was all one blobby, shapeless mess.

He wondered what the joke was, to make them laugh like that. He wished he could be in on it, wished he could… be there.

"I tried to find one with Mom in it, but the best I could find was—oh, _Shoto,_" Fuyumi sighed, from somewhere far away. A hand came to rest gently on his head, and Shoto inhaled harshly, once, before exhaling with a rough sob.

"Thank you," he said, some indeterminate time later, and he didn't mean just for the photo. Fuyumi patted his head once in reply, and handed him a tissue, not saying anything. She knew him the best, by now, the best out of anyone in the world, and she knew that the last thing he wanted right now was an acknowledgment of his loss of control.

He took the tissue and wiped his face, wincing when he wasn't careful enough and his nail scratched the edge of his scar.

A hand caught his (gently, always gently) and placed it in his lap. Shoto let Fuyumi wipe away the last of the evidence of his weakness, and when she'd finished, they spent a few, silent moments together, looking back on a time when there had been fewer tears and fewer scars—back in simpler, happier times.

Then Shoto slowly got up and placed the picture in the small chest of drawers he kept under his writing desk, careful to put it under a few other things, so it wouldn't be immediately visible upon opening.

Then, by unspoken agreement, they both walked to the door.

"Shoto…" Fuyumi hesitated, one hand on the door. She opened her mouth once, closed it, and bit her lip.

Shoto had a pretty good feeling of what she was trying to say, and gave a tired, understanding huff.

"I get it, Nee-san. Don't worry, I'm not gonna put it where… _anyone_ can see it." He gave her a meaningful look, sure she would understand what he meant by 'anyone'.

She nodded, relief flitting over her face. She slipped out silently a second later, and Shota slid the shoji doors quietly shut behind her.

Exhaustion pulled at him, aching in the corners of his eyes and in a throat that felt swollen from having to form words, trying to pull his limbs down to the ground against his will.

Shoto did it one better, and let gravity and his tiredness pull him down onto his bed, where he barely managed to crawl under the covers.

He realized he hadn't turned off his light once he was already in the bed, and the mere thought of twisting his aching ribcage to reach up above his head for the switch almost brought him to tears again.

_The light's not so bad, I guess_, Shoto thought grudgingly, and let out a deep, long yawn that nearly cracked his jaw. He wiggled to get comfortable, and somewhere between thinking it was a good thing he always set his alarm to go off weekly and wondering what tomorrow's lessons would be like, he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.


	3. The Art of War

Disclaimer: I own nothing

* * *

"I AM HERE—"

Slouched shoulders stiffening and spine straightening like someone had jabbed him harshly in the back, Shoto rigidly controlled the sudden skyrocketing of tension throughout his entire body.

"—COMING THROUGH THE DOOR LIKE A NORMAL PERSON!"

There was the sudden feeling of a whole room inhaling at the same time; then a building chorus of awed, excited voices rose up in its wake.

"Oh my god, it's really him—"

"My cousin would never believe me if I told her I actually get to be taught by the Symbol of Peace—"

"Look at his costume, isn't that from the Silver Age? What a classic, it's incredible to see it outside of old, variety re-runs—"

Even the up-until-now solemn Crow Boy's shimmery-black crest was raised in excitement (or so Shoto assumed, as this was the second time he'd seen it happen in relation to an exciting event, and there were no other obvious changes noticeable in his face). A glance to his left showed Yaoyorozu with glowing eyes and a warm flush to her face; a glance to his right showed his neighbor hammering his table, caught up in the general air of disbelieving joy.

It was a bit like stepping into a library with a group full of illiterates, you alone able to delve into the wonders hidden within bindings full of knowledge. If his fellow students wanted to gaze up in mindless wonder at the Number One Hero, ignoring the wealth of potential information sitting right in front of them, that was their prerogative; he would happily take whatever advantage he could get.

Shoto relaxed his spine and leaned forward on his desk with his elbows, feeling the nearly-physical impression of his mind sharpening as he took in All Might—the universally recognized Symbol of Peace and the Number One Hero—from head to toe, drinking in every detail.

There was something about All Might that was, simply put, different. There was a sense about him of innate goodness, dependability, and god-like strength (because while strength wasn't the main thing, as there were endless varieties of strength and not all of them worthy, it could not be denied that the man had it in spades). Shoto felt, at that moment, a resounding relief that that insurmountable strength had never been successfully replicated, though many had tried.

(This, he knew from painful experience).

His bi-colored eyes shot from one point to the next, trying, even if it were in vain, to identify what it was that made All Might so different. Knowing what had made the man who he was today was the first step in figuring out how to beat him to the top.

All Might beamed down at them all, his smile as radiant as a piercing sunbeam taken straight to the eye, and nearly as painful to behold. He stared into it for one, two seconds before it became too much and he was forced to look away, sourly thinking that if his _smile_ was the special touch that made All Might the incredible being that he was, Shoto was already destined to fail.

Still, even with a well of bitterness mixing with the determination in his chest, he couldn't deny the slightest swell of excitement because—well.

Because this was _All Might_.

"I teach basic training! This subject is one where you will train in a variety of different ways, in order to learn the basics of being a hero! In this subject, you'll be taking the most units out of any of the other ones you will be taking, and it will generally occur in the second period of the school day. Let's get right into it, shall we? Today we will be doing—"

He flashed a card reading: BATTLE.

"_Battle._" Shoto thought he heard Anger-Management Issues breathe out, gleeful, and he _definitely_ heard the dread in someone else's voice as they repeated, with faint horror: "Battle…"

"—Combat training! And to go with that aaaarrre these!"

All Might pointed at a section of the wall, where the sounds of whirring gears announced the opening of hitherto-unseen shelving units, which slid smoothly open to reveal decent-sized storage slots in a numbered sequence.

"These are your Costumes! Before applying for entering the hero course, when you filled in your Quirk Registration Forms, you were asked to fill out a Costume Request Form as well! I hope they are all to your satisfaction!"

The class gave an ecstatic roar, the sound bouncing off the walls to create an unholy racket. Shoto flicked his eyes to the storage units and swiftly back, felt the anticipation turn his body jittery with restless energy, and was surprised to realize that he almost wanted to join in. A chance to see his classmates in action (allowing him to categorize weaknesses and liabilities), plus the chance to potentially see parts of the great and powerful All Might that the public never got to see? What was _not_ to like?

All Might grinned at them, seeming not in the least intimidated or irritated by the noise, and looking equally as excited. "Get yourself changed, and when you're finished, I will see you at Ground Beta!"

_"Yes, sir!"_

* * *

Shoto's costume fit as comfortably as he had expected it to.

Father had been the one to commission the designs, in the end, but in spite of that, Shoto had to grudging admit that it served its purpose:

The dark blue jacket, with its silver accents, was created specifically to resist extreme heat, in order to (_very optimistically_, Shoto couldn't help the snide thought) avoid Shoto burning it up with his flames. The built-in collar (silver in color and created from a special quirk-created alloy) would sense his body temperature, and either cool it down or heat it up to keep it regulated. A functional utility belt, with pockets containing small capsules of water, pain medication, and disinfectant, bisected his waste, while dark blue pants with built-in protective knee pads of the same make made the set. White utility boots going up to mid-calve had thick treads and small, spiked soles to enable Shoto to walk on frozen ground.

Sleek, functional, understated. There were more days where he despised and hated Endeavor than there were not, but just for today, Shoto could admit to a grudging appreciation for the man's professional tastes.

His original design had been a simple white, functional and plain, with a material made specifically to withstand cold—no mention of fire, there. He had thought to cast ice over the left side of his body, putting a physical barrier between his ice and the part of himself he would love to be allowed to forget.

Father hadn't been about to let that stand—even after an extensive argument which, while it may not have ended well for Shoto, had done an unusual amount of damage to his opponent. That wasn't an accomplishment Shoto could often lay claim to, and it had helped limit some of the sting at losing the chance to push his own designs through.

Still, there was still time to add a little modification of his own...

"Yo, man, sweet outfit!"

Shoto glanced up from his contemplation to see some of the boys gathering into a loose circle around Anger-Management Issues to admire his costume. The boy himself was obviously enjoying the attention: Shoto could practically see the superiority-complex puffing up his chest, the ego in the upwards-tilt to his chin, the arrogance in his smirking mouth.

His own mouth pursing in a moue of distaste, Shoto slipped off his blazer and began unbuttoning his shirt.

"Fuckin' right it is!" AMI boasted, his overly-loud voice echoing across the long line of metal doors. He brought one red-soled black boot up to slam on the locker-room bench beside him, red clashing with pale, washed-out blue, and thumped a fist against the black straps crisscrossing his chest.

"If I'm gonna be a hero, you bet your ass I'm gonna be unforgettable! So don't get in my way, extras!"

The urge to roll his eyes was quite impossible to ignore… But Shoto had been raised to be a polite, quiet boy, with excellent manners and a calm demeanor. He had also been raised to be seen and not heard, which Shoto thought he had learned the best out of all his lessons, and served him well in this particular instance:

He turned his head away, so as not to be seen or heard, and rolled his eyes as hard as he pleased, his mouth pulling down into a sharp scowl of exasperation. The small outward expression did a lot to sooth the underlying anxiety at the thought of having to change in front of so many potential gazes, and it helped Shoto move onto the actual removing of clothes. With only the shortest of pauses, he undid the last button on his shirt and pulled it off. He made sure to keep his body turned to the side, exposing as little of his upper-body to the room as he could, and quickly slipped the new jacket over his undershirt.

His locker was wide and roomy, with a door that swung open to reveal a full-length mirror, something Shoto fully took advantage of to keep everyone in his sights and to keep as much of his body hidden from view, both. Most of his scars weren't easily visible unless they caught the light wrong, and the ones that were were concentrated mostly on his upper arms, chest, and stomach. Luckily, no one had chosen the lockers to his right or left, nor the one directly across from him, so as long as he kept his upper back at an angle to most of the room, and his torso hunched, he would most likely be in the clear.

That knowledge didn't stop the building itch crawling up his body with every set of eyes that accidentally passed over his exposed skin.

Shoto checked around him after he had finished, just in case, and was relieved to find that everyone had either been occupied with training or with the spectacle Anger-Management Issues was making of himself.

"I think my suit turned out pretty good," another student commented, not actually sounding too sure about that. He had the large, pouty sort of lips Shoto vaguely remembered seeing in an 18+ magazine one time (a magazine that had been discarded discreetly in the rubbish pile, back when Shoto's large house had contained one more teenage boy); brown eyes and short, spiky hair; and a pretty large build. He was also quite tall, the tips of his hair nearly of the same height as his locker. He held a bright-yellow suit in his hand, a functional belt with white utility pockets in the other, and a slight frown on his face.

Shoto looked him up and down, and abruptly recalled that they were, in fact, desk-neighbors. Had they been introduced? Would he have remembered, if they had?

Another boy, this one with longish black hair ending in uneven spikes about his neck and a bulging, circular shape to his elbows, slapped an encouraging hand on Big Lips's back.

"You haven't even tried it on yet, stop sounding so doubtful! Mine's looking a bit different from what I asked for, but this is UA, you know? They can afford some really decent modifications, Yaoyorozu was talking about some of the companies they have on contract."

He had on a skin-tight black and white bodysuit with half sleeves and yellow accents, perfectly coordinated to match white boots with yellow accents that ended just below the knee. There was a helmet tucked into his right arm, and Elbows clapped the other boy playfully on the back as he passed him on his way towards the doors.

"I think mine is quite _merveilleux_!" Shimmering purple material twirled, giving off the impression of a thousand twinkling stars glittering in the firmament—if the firmament were purple, and if the firmament were attached to a gaudy, tasteless metal suit of armor, with even more tasteless accents. "I look absolutely _fabuleux_!"

Elbows did a double-take, then hesitantly gave the glittery, twinkle-eyed blond the high-five his eagerly raised hand was clearly asking for. Then he stared down at his own hand, looking confused.

That was a feeling Shoto earnestly related to when he actually found himself physically leaning back, as if distance would be enough to protect himself from _that_ unfortunate collection of disturbing annoyances. He quickly decided that he wasn't even going to think about touching _that_, the mere thought sending his skin crawling, and pretended he hadn't seen anything.

"Don't dawdle too long changing, or you'll be late for our first lesson with All Might!" Elbows called over his shoulder as he walked towards the exit, and gave a cheeky grin.

Fiddling with the collar of his jacket as he realized that, yet again, he had no idea who that boy was, Shoto wondered, with no little exasperation, where all these damn people had come from.

Anger-Management Issues (Shoto mentally paused, rearranged his thinking, and dubbed AMI 'Explosions' instead, as it was considerably shorter)—'Explosions' had large, ominously grenade-looking apparatuses attached to his arms; when he snarled in reply to what Elbows had said, and released little pop-pop-popping sounds from his gloved hands to emphasize his displeasure, his appearance quickly went from ominous to menacing. The sound wasn't much louder than the hiss and pop of a firecracker, but Shoto, only half his attention on pulling his pants up over his hips, caught the way another student flinched at the sound, his arms going instinctively to cover his face. The student froze and dropped his hands a moment later, but the familiar sight had been unmistakable.

Shoto's eyes flicked over to the student, then away. Unlike with Elbows and Big Lips—Elbows had already left the room, and while Big Lips was busy muttering to himself as he struggled to get into skin-tight yellow—he deliberately _didn't_ catalog any details about the boy. Shoto tugged lightly at his belt, checking to make sure it was secure and fought to forget the way his stomach had swooped upwards into his throat, and his skin had begun to feel like a nearly-hatched spider egg had broken across it, at having born witness to such a humiliating, intimate, entirely familiar and unwelcome sight.

Then it was time put his things neatly away in his locker, tug on socks and boots and make his way outside, and Shoto forgot all about the boy with the wild green hair and freckles on his face as he walked out into the sun.

(Later, when the boy was getting chased down by Explosions in a very one-sided, familiar manner, Shoto would force himself to clench his jaw against the urge to shake All Might and shout, _Are you blind, you stupid fool? Stop this already, he's going to kill him! _ Later, he would remember the boy from the Apprehension test, whose Quirk hurt him the way Shoto's had hurt himself and others, and would see the way the boy turned a terrible beating into a triumphant win. But as they passed through the hallways and out into the sun, he and his fellow students wearing the first step to a bright future, all Shoto cared about was All Might telling them they were heroes, and feeling the unstoppable swelling of pride in his chest.)

* * *

In the end, it was rather... anti-climatic.

The 'battle', as it were, was between a Villain Team and a Hero Team, to be decided by lottery. After being forced to stand still and without reacting as they watched the disaster of a first battle (Explosions and Iida vs. Gravity and Freckles), Shoto was glad to be allowed to head into the training facility and toward the abandoned building where he and his teammate, the boy with the extra arms (Tentacles), would play the heroes for the purpose of the exercise, against Team B (Invisible Girl and… Tails, the guy with the tail). They had fifteen minutes to complete their objective: take the 'bomb' from the villains (which could be accomplished simply by touching it), or capture them both before the buzzer rang.

Watching the first battle had been, simply put: _awful_.

The facility was full of cameras, if not microphones; Shoto's eyes had tracked the long line of screens, each one connected to a camera positioned to capture as much imagery as possible, and hadn't been able to stop the way his twitching fingers pushed further and further into the side of this thigh in time with his fluctuating emotions. The way Explosions had so obviously set off after Freckles sparked the first twinge of concern; that had quickly risen to anger and full-on discomfort as the boy (with such an obviously powerful, well-trained quirk) utilized his position as the more capable fighter to violently throw down his less-talented classmate (who was, understandably if rather worryingly, not using his quirk) with a malicious sort of fury that threatened to throw Shoto's icy calm out the window. The different degrees of Shoto's outrage had also fought vehemently with his determination to block the fight from his mind entirely—because recognizing an abusive relationship was one thing, but being forced to actively view it was something entirely different. It didn't help that Shoto could read lips with moderate proficiency, and what he was reading was awful enough that Shoto couldn't stop the occasional incredulous, bewildered glance at All Might, who was watching the same screens he was, with the same dialogue actually running through his ears via an earpiece... and was doing nothing.

When the hero team—Freckles's team—somehow eked out a win, Shoto was surprisingly relieved, enough that his tongue loosened and he was able to make a relatively cool and unemotional comment about the different teams and their successes and losses. But the emotions that had been stirred up within him were like the mud lying at the bottom of a shallow pond: once stirred up, the water took a long while to settle. These unpleasant, murky feelings followed Shoto with him into his battle, erasing what little had remained of his former excitement over this opportunity to finally learn from, and about, the Number One Hero. As he and Tentacles walked to the building and stopped a short way into it, waiting for their cue to start, all Shoto could think was that he hoped to get it over with quickly.

"Combat training match, second battle: START!"

Tentacles immediately spread his extra limbs, the ends of two of them turning into ears that quickly switched to mouths that said: "There's one on the North-side of the fourth-floor hallway—"

Half of Shoto's struggling equilibrium urged him to hear the boy out. Allies were of immense importance to a hero, and it was never too soon to start cultivating them; if he brushed Tentacles off now, he risked alienating him and causing fiction between them in any future activities.

The other fifty-percent of Shoto was a squirming mess of maggots crawling through his intestines, digging into soft flesh and sending nerves tingling, doing their very best to break their way up and out; it was this side of him that pushed the plan that had vaguely settled in his head into solid form, winning out over caution and good sense.

He began, first, by walking. "Go wait outside. It's not going to be safe here in a minute," he cut off Tentacles mid-sentence, his mind grimly focusing around the knowledge that he needed to finish this, now. Without checking to see if Tentacles was doing as he'd been told, Shoto placed his right-hand flat against the wall beside him, and let the icy tendrils of his quirk flow through the tips of his fingers and out across the wall.

Crystals of ice formed and layered and spread out from his right foot and his right hand both, and in a matter of seconds, the floor had been covered—then the ceiling, then the walls, then the entirety of the long, dark hallway before him. Shoto tilted his head, counting silent seconds until a light tickle of coldness in his right shoulder and the numbers in his head told him he had expelled enough ice to cover the whole of the building.

The 'Villains' were either preparing for an ambush, waiting to begin a daring face-to-face fight with the 'Heroes', or were hoping to turn this into a battle of attrition.

"Either way," Shoto murmured to himself, feeling as cold as the ice trailing from his body, "they don't stand a chance."

As an afterthought, Shoto removed his hand from the wall and placed it on his left-side; the half-formed idea that had entered his head in the changing room bloomed to life as vapor froze across the entirety of his left side, from the tips of his white boots to the roots of his red hair, and thickened, covering all the parts of himself he hated to see in a comforting layer of cold. Some of the insects burrowing their way into his insides seemed to settle, then, as Shoto breathed out white clouds of air and moved purposefully in the direction of the villain team.

Ice crunched beneath his feet as he entered the room. Tentacles had shouted out the location of the second person he had sensed from somewhere near the front of the building, and Shoto had obligingly headed in their direction, a guilty thought that he could have tried a little harder to listen before dismissing his partner flitting through his head and out again instantly. Once in the room, Shoto paused a moment to eye Tails, who was in a defensive stance Shoto recognized from his own training and had a nervous, but determined look in his eyes.

Dark amusement floated through his mind, and Shoto told the boy mildly: "You can move, or try to, if you like; but you should probably consider how useful you'll actually be once you've torn the skin off of both of your feet."

He smiled—a cold, tight smile—and was rewarded when the boy shrank back and didn't make a move when Shoto walked past him.

His left hand touched down on frozen metal, and All Might's voice over the loudspeakers called: "HERO TEAM, WIIIIIIN!"

With only a second's hesitation after the words rang throughout the concrete room, Shoto let his left-side rush out of him in the form of direct heat. Ice began to melt, turning the room nearly invisible from the resulting steam. Shoto watched it disperse, the ice turning to water, and commented mildly to the motionless boy behind him, without turning around: "With the difference in our levels of ability, there was no way you would have won. Don't take it personally."

Having done what he needed to do, Shoto turned on his heel and left. He walked past Tentacles (whose stare he could feel on him as he passed, and subsequently ignored), through the operations center, past the central viewing room and into the first utility closet he could find, wherein he allowed himself a few, precious seconds to chase away discombobulation with the comforting familiarity of pain.

Then he got to his feet, rearranged his face into a cool, inscrutable mask, and went to hear the no-doubt uninspiring opinions of his peers.

(His building disappointment with someone he had secretly admired for most of his life he tucked away, deep, deep, deep down inside him, and tried his hardest to pretend he hadn't felt it in the first place.)


	4. Sound the Alarm

Disclaimer: I own nothing!

* * *

It was the third day of their first week at U.A., and they were, of all things, choosing a class representative.

Around him, the class broke out in loud exclamations about getting to do, 'finally, something normal!' Following that, practically every student tried their best to out-shout the others, each topic featuring some form of 'if I were representative' or, 'if you pick me'.

Shoto slowly lowered his chin to rest against the heel of his palm, poked out his index finger, and set about absently tapping it against his chin in thought.

Class Representative: a position of authority, or (mild, at this point) prestige. Potentially a lot of work, of course, but the benefits should far outweigh the downsides.

Once the time for interning came around, Hero Agencies would be looking to snag the students with certain characteristics, such as the expected good grades and useful quirks; but they would be also be looking for signs of leadership ability—a very important quality in a hero. Extra-curricular classes, good marks in teamwork and being the class representative were some of the easiest ways to get your profile noticed by the good agencies that would really pave your way into the world of heroes.

There were practically only upsides, actually. While being in the public eye had never been something Shoto enjoyed (and was one of the aspects of being a pro-hero Shoto dreaded the most), it didn't make him imagine he was breaking out in hives the way physical and social interaction could occasionally manage, and he had enough practice following orders and completing tasks to think he would be rather good at the job.

All that being said...

Shoto sighed, quietly, as Iida jumped to his feet and began scolding the students for their lack of forward-thinking (something rather spoiled by the way his own hand was raised in the air as high as it could go). Kicking his chair back, he tilted his head up to look at the ceiling.

...All that being said, Father would want him to do it, and the fact that Father wanted him to do it made Shoto very much want to do the exact opposite.

What was the term, cutting off your nose to spite your face?

Shoto lightly rocked his chair as it was decided that everyone would vote for their preferred candidate, and whoever ended up with the most votes (assuming anyone didn't vote for themselves, which seemed unlikely in a classroom full of potential heroes) would be elected Representative of Class 1-A. Slips of paper were passed around, pencils scraped softly against paper, suspicious and speculative eyes cast covert glances about the room and gave it all an air of terrible suspense.

Not ready to commit to anything just yet, Shoto gave himself one last second to think it through. He tap-tap-tapped his pencil on against his chin, giving in to the urge to nibble on the end absently after a half-second's struggle.

A sequence of taps later, and another scribbling sound joined the chorus.

Whether sabotaging a very important step in his goal to becoming Number One, on his own power, was worth thumbing his nose at his father was a difficult thing to decide. But at the end of the day, he figured, it couldn't be _that _terrible, could it, living without your nose?

When the voting was finally announced, Yaoyorozu Momo had 2 votes instead of 1, and Todoroki Shoto had zero.

* * *

The bell had rung, first period had ended, and it was now time for lunch.

Shoto moved robotically forwards as another person received their lunch and tray from the famous lunch hero, Lunch Rush. Loud voices echoed throughout the large cafeteria, careening off the large windows and traveling over and under the numerous tables spread out for the students' use, contributing to the cheerful cacophony of countless hungry students socializing within the same space.

The line had been long at the start, but only a minute in and Shoto was nearly at the front. Another person moved forward, and he barely stopped himself from ramming into the student in front of him: a tall student with a Mutant Quirk that gave him, upon closer inspection, orange, finger-like appendages for hair.

Sweat trickled down his right arm, quickly turning to ice before it could roll down to his hand. His left felt hot and swollen, like a carton of milk that had been left out in a warm room.

This had been a terrible idea.

The line moved forward again, and it was finally only one person left before Shoto.

What had he been thinking? Spiting Father was all well and good, but what had possessed him to think this was in any way an intelligent decision?

His eyes darted to the right as a group of students (support students, from the look of their quirks and the bits and pieces of random materials they seemed to be arguing over) brushed past him, a piece of unidentifiable metal being waved about nearly catching on his shoulder.

Shoto felt his own breath catch, and he was incredibly relieved to see that it was finally his turn in the line.

His arm itched, and he absently scratched at it as he stepped forward.

"Welcome to U.A. High's cafeteria! Anything you order will be put on your student ID card, to be paid for at the end of the month! If you have any questions, the staff member at the end of the line can answer them for you. My name is Lunch Rush, and you can order lunch A, B, or C, which is either Vegan Curry, _Katsudon, _or today's special, which is poached swordfish steak with barley rice, assorted pickled vegetables and miso soup with tofu, in that order. Do you have any allergies, dietary or religious requirements I need to be aware of?"

All of this had been said in a single rushed breath, somehow understandable despite the speed and the way Lunch Rush hadn't stopped the movement of his Quirk that allowed for incredibly fast multitasking. Shoto felt dizzy just thinking about it, and also slightly ill.

"I…" the words stuck in his throat. He coughed once, hoping to clear it, and rubbed his arm. "I would like… the. B lunch, please. And no allergies or anything to speak of."

A beat, then: "…Thank you."

"Happy to be of service! Have a fulfilling meal and a wonderful day!"

So saying, the famous Lunch Hero handed Shoto a tray with miso soup, a small plate of pickles and a large bowl of _katsudon, _which he had somehow managed to produce in the second between blinks of his eyes. Shoto was then gently nudged along by the back of one of the hero's gloved hands, and he obediently carried his tray towards the staff at the register.

"I would like to pay in cash," he said, before the staff member could do more than open her mouth. The woman (laugh lines around her eyes, comfortably rounded face, about the age of his next-door neighbor's Aunt) looked briefly ruffled, but was quick to smile at him and say, "Are you sure dear? As a student at this school, it is simply much easier to create a tab and pay it all off in one go. It's so much harder for your parents to keep track of your spending if it's all over the place."

_That's the whole point, _Shoto didn't say. His side itched in a long fiery line from his hip to his underarm, and he longed to scratch at it.

"That's all right, thank you," he said politely instead. "I'm sure they won't mind." The hands holding his tray tightened so they didn't waver, and he kept his eyes on the gentling swaying surface of his miso-soup as the staff lady gave a little sigh.

"Well, it's up to you, I suppose," she said. "That will be 350 yen, please."

Shoto removed the 500 yen coin tucked into his blazer pocket for this very purpose and accepted the change without overly jostling his tray.

"Enjoy your lunch!"

He gave a quick little bow of his head and turned, intending to find a seat and eat as quickly as he could. The room was getting fuller by the moment, and rowdier too. The noise was tiny little hammers hitting the base of his skull, like his head was a giant nail for his errant thoughts to vengefully hammer into place. The sooner he ate and left, the better.

He made it one, two, three steps before faltering.

Everywhere he turned, the only spaces were between groups of anywhere from two to six, long tables already falling into zones of friendship, with no spaces left for the odd one out.

Shoto forced himself to start walking again, calmly, like nothing was wrong, even as his eyes skittered from table to table, seeing spaces become smaller and smaller as groups of twos and threes and fours squeezed together to make room for more groups of threes. One by one, the available spaces were disappearing, and though he knew it was irrational, Shoto could feel a swell of sickening panic begin to wind through his organs, pulling at all the carefully controlled parts of him and trying to tear it all down and apart.

Would it be strange if he at his lunch outside? Was that even allowed? A space at the table he was walking past opened and Shoto paused, mid-step, only to jerkily put down his foot and move on in the next instant as the space was immediately filled.

Panic tasted of iron in his mouth—iron and ash, iron and ash.

_Not this script, _Shoto thought faintly, as the world started to get blurry around the edges, sound fracturing in random places and leaving only snatches of unintelligible sound. _Not here, not like this. _

_"—_roki! Todoroki, hey, over here!"

The pieces to the puzzles flew together, synapses finally connecting as sound traveled clearly into his ear, through his ear canal, and into his brain.

He snapped his head in the direction of the call, his labored breathing catching in his chest as blond hair with a streak of black—carefully styled today, so that it would lie down flat—bobbed up in down in time with the raised hand waving in his direction. Two eyes—one blue, one gray—traveled from that arm to the sides of it, marking fluffy pink, spiked-red hair and shark teeth, squinted-red eyes under a fringe of blond hair, a female uniform worn by an invisible person, and a toothy smile and a head of slick black hair.

His feet moved without his permission, taking him around a line of healthy potted plants, between tables of chattering third years and over to the back of the cafeteria, where the end of one table was mostly taken up by 1-A students.

"Yo!" Kaminari said, flopping his hand weirdly in greeting. He grinned at Shoto, though that grin slowly slipped off his face when Shoto didn't respond, or even do more than continue to stand blankly in front of the table.

"Uh… I mean… hi. Um. Todoroki. Do you, uh, want to—"

"Oi, idiot, if you've got something to say, fucking say it! Your stuttering is getting on my fucking nerves!" Explosions shouted suddenly, and banged his fist down on the table for emphasis. Everyone flinched, though they recovered quickly, most of them shooting Explosions annoyed looks and exasperated rolling of their eyes.

Shoto had taken a step back at the sudden noise, shoulders and legs tensing for a quick escape. When he recognized what had happened a second later, he did his best to straighten out his body and rid it of tension, annoyed at the display of weakness.

"Come on Bakugo, there's no need for that, is there? Take a chill pill!" Shark Teeth stepped in, waving his chopsticks under the boy's nose teasingly.

Explosions only snarled and swiped at the offending chopsticks with his own, and an impromptu battle commenced, two fierce fighters determined take the other's chopsticks down. The others at the table began cheering immediately, the one with the black hair (Elbows, from the changing room) taking up a chant and starting to bang his fists on the table.

The noise quickly escalated, to the point where the lunch monitoring staff showed up at their table to ask them to quiet down. The students dutifully apologized and promised to keep the noise down, but the second the staff member left, the duel commenced once more—though quietly this time, and with less cheering and swearing.

Through it all, Shoto continued to stand, his feet nailed to the spot. His left side ached like an old wound, and his right began to faintly mist as his control started to slip.

This had been a terrible idea.

_"Thank you, Saito-san," Shoto said quietly, taking the offered lunch box, delicately folded in a dark blue handkerchief. _

_Saito-san smiled in that way she had where it didn't quite meet her eyes, bowed shallowly, and quickly turned back to the kitchen. Shoto held the lunch for a moment longer, eyeing it with unexpected weariness. _

_He knew what it contained without having to look: _

_Fish, broiled and unsalted, with poached or steamed vegetables in three different colors. Brown rice, with a small side of pickled radish or cucumbers, a portion of sautéed burdock root and carrots. A slice of apple, or part of an orange. _

_All of it purportedly calculated to fit in with the food schedule he was required to religiously stick to, or face the consequences come his next physical. _

_He had been eating slightly different versions of this particular lunch for as long as he could remember. In recent years, as Shoto grew older and became more comfortable fighting back and making demands, Father had loosened up the reigns with breakfast, allowing him to eat what he wanted for the most part, as 'he was the one who would feel the consequences of a lack of energy from his lack of forward-thinking, and from indulging in his childish impulses.' Father hadn't been wrong, really, but Shoto had relished the chance to do anything outside of the rigid structure Father had set for him. _

_Dinner, too, would sometimes change. If Fuyumi was able to catch Father in a good mood, sometimes he would allow her to cook something different, accepting the excuse that she wasn't able to replicate Saito-san's amazing cooking, and could he perhaps let it go just this once? _

_Father could easily have his attention sidetracked to the news __with a well-placed comment on those nights, when his mood was mellow and there was no oppressive cloud above their heads, there to rain thunder and lightning down on the meal at the slightest hint of rebellion. Once he was caught up monologuing about something that had caught his attention, Shoto and Fuyumi were able to enjoy the peace of the other's presence, the delight of unfamiliar food (soba was his favorite, because Saito-san never made the noodles right, but Fuyumi's shrimp gratin was easily his second) and the knowledge that they had to take advantage of this peace while they could, however long they could. _

_Sometimes those nights would end badly; still, what time they were allowed always lingered fondly in his memory. _

_Now, with the sense-memory of his first two, relatively-successful days of high school lingering in his veins—with all their good and bad, all of it different and overwhelming but necessary, the first step in the rest of his life—Shoto found himself surprisingly reluctant to bring along any more of the old him. _

_"Shoto, do you have a minute?" _

_Shoto jerked his attention away from his contemplation, tensing only long enough for his brain to recognize the voice as Fuyumi's, before expelling the tension in one long breath. _

_Breakfast was over; Father had left to answer a phone call; Saito-san was in the kitchen, the door left open, letting the clatter of dishes cover any words they might exchange. Otherwise, Shoto imagined Fuyumi wouldn't have risked speaking at all. _

_"I have something for you," she said, her voice a low rumble, barely above a whisper. _

_He instinctively shifted his body to hide the passing of an envelope, both of their eyes darting in different directions, just in case. _

_"What's this?" Shoto asked, just as quiet. He was pretty sure he knew the answer from the feel and sound of the envelope, but he wasn't sure of the reason for it. _

_"The pro-hero Lunch Rush has been at U.A. for years now, did you know?" She asked, apropos of nothing. _

_Shoto blinked at her in confusion. "No? I mean, I didn't know that. Is there a reason you're bringing him up now?" _

_Fuyumi gently brushed at the hand holding the envelope in his pocket, tilting her head meaningfully. "Lunch Rush makes tasty, affordable lunches for all staff and students at the UA. I've talked to an acquaintance of mine who has a sibling in UA, and she said that they're just as good as any restaurant, and healthy too." _

_Shoto was starting to see where this was going. His fingers clenched around the envelope, feeling the indentations from the few coins within it digging into his skin. _

_"Nee-san," he began, uncomfortable, but she was quick to interrupt him, everything from her voice to her body language radiating sincerity. _

_"Take the money, Shoto. I make decent money from my part-time job at the nursery, and I don't have anything to really spend it on other than clothes and the occasional trip with friends, so this isn't going to hurt my savings. I want you to try something different than those bland, cookie-cutter meals Father always makes us eat. I get the chance to eat something different every once in a while, but you don't. Let me do this for you, please." _

_The sound of running water stopped, and Shoto flicked his gaze to the paper doors and strained to hear for any other noises, aware they were running out of time. _

_The coins gently clicked together as he shifted, unsure; but her eyes urged him to agree, the hand that had moved up to his arm squeezing gently, always gently, and that was enough to persuade him. _

_Feeling a sudden burst of warmth that had him blinking his eyes to take away the sting, Shoto nodded jerkily, once. They both turned away when footsteps began heading in their direction, and by the time Father had entered the room, Fuyumi was quietly sitting, and Shoto was gone. _

He appreciated what Fuyumi had been trying to do: she knew that she had a lot more chances to do different things than he did, and she had tried the best she knew how to let him try out the parts of life that he was missing. The thought of doing something Father had expressively forbidden, even behind his back, had been very compelling when he'd had time to consider it. It had helped give him that last nudge he needed to get up when the bell rang for lunch, his lunch box (still wrapped neatly in its blue handkerchief) tucked inside his desk.

Shoto shifted his gaze to Kaminari—who sat nearest to him at the end of the table—when he broke into loud guffaws as Shark Teeth managed to yank one of Explosions's chopsticks out of his hand with his own, and Explosions's face turned bright red in response.

With the way his stomach was snarling at even the thought of eating, whether he got a seat or not wouldn't matter anyway.

_Sorry, Nee-san, _he thought tiredly, and turned away to leave. _I tried my best. _

"Eh, Todoroki? Where you going, man?"

Shoto ignored the voice calling after him, mind set on mechanically retracing his steps towards the front of the room, already trying to think of excuses for why his lunch was untouched.

"Hey, what did you say to him, dumdum?"

"I dunno, he just walked off—"

A loud ringing cut through whatever Kaminari had been about to say. Shoto looked up sharply as the speakers announced a Level 3 Security Breach ("That's the intruder alert! Fuck, we gotta get out of here—"). Around him, students everywhere were dropping whatever they had been doing and getting to their feet, a feeling of panic slowly rising with each person that pushed their way to the back and towards the doors.

Feeling inexplicably calm for the first time since entering the cafeteria, Shoto placed his full lunch tray onto the table nearest to him and began to move slowly towards the doors, unable to stop the guilty thought that flittered through his mind:

_Saved by the bell._

* * *

Later, after they'd all made their way to the classroom (Shoto had been moving slow enough that by the time most of the students had gotten shoved together in a tightly panicked ball in the hallways, he had been able to slip out, find an available chair, and patiently wait out the rush), Kaminari approached him, his face apologetic, body language wary.

"Hey, so… about lunch—"

"Everyone, sit down, please! We need to-there are things to talk about, um, so please sit down and b-be quiet!"

Shoto took the chance to escape what would doubtless be a tedious conversation. He turned to pull back his chair to sit, paused, and glanced up at Kaminari with a deliberately flat look of disinterest.

"Was there something you needed? Class is about to start."

Kaminari winced, looked at the front of the room despairingly, and reluctantly shook his head.

"Nevermind, no biggie."

"Well, then." Shoto sat down while continuing to maintain eye contact, making sure to keep the disinterest blatantly obvious. After a moment, Kaminari reluctantly turned and headed back to his desk.

As Freckles began a stuttering speech about deciding on the class officers, Shoto quietly reached into his desk and felt around till his fingers came across the edges of the cloth still holding his lunch.

They would have a ten-minute break after their next lesson, which would be Foundational Hero Training, according to the schedule. He would have a chance to eat then, if he wanted to.

He should eat it.

Shoto leaned absently back in his chair as Iida sprang out of his own and started harping on something about 'doing my best as the representative of this class'.

(He tucked the unexpected change in representatives in the back of his mind, to be dissected down to its very essence at a later date).

It was a perfectly decent lunch, one many children from low-income families with two working parents would kill to have every day. He was hungry, past the ever-present nausea, and would be even more so by the end of the next lesson. That he was even hungry in the first place, he could only blame on himself, and taking it out on a perfectly decent meal (by tossing the entire thing into the trash, like he desperately wanted to) was below him.

His fingers stopped their rhythmic stroking as Shoto hesitated, torn. In the end, he let his hand slip away and onto his lap.

He was conscious of how very petty he could be, when given the opportunity to actually act on it; but in this particular instance, Shoto wasn't quite able to justify that pettiness the way he normally would, so the food would not be going into the garbage. It would not, however, be going into his stomach, because he'd promised Fuyumi that he would try, and eating it seemed like conceding defeat.

There would be other days, to try again.

As Aizawa-sensei finally dragged himself out of his sleeping bag to announce that they would be doing rescue training with the Pro-Hero 13 and All Might, Shoto pressed his fingers into lingering bruises and used the tingling pain to bring his focus to the present.


	5. Rollercoaster Ride

WARNING: Shigaraki Tomura and the League of Villains.

* * *

Iida had fully stepped into his role as Class Representative.

Shoto sidestepped the boy in question as he sliced his hand through the air and enthusiastically urged everyone to step into the bus 'in an orderly fashion', and tucked his hands deeper into his pockets as he climbed up the raised step and onto the bus.

While they waited for the bus, Shoto had planted himself on a white picnic table, seeing no reason for why he should have to stand around waiting. Unfortunately, in doing so, he'd nearly brought the full-strength of Iida's self-important wrath down on his head. A verbal spar would have been satisfactory in its own way, but in the end, the bus arrived just in time to distract the boy, and Shoto was able to avoid having a whistle blown directly beside his ear.

The bus itself was typical of the public buses he saw on occasion, when his car happened to stop beside one at a stoplight. Sometimes he would look through the tinted windows of his private chauffeur and wonder what it must be like, cramming into a small, enclosed space like that, where you could overbalance at any moment and experience accidental full-body contact with a stranger.

The claustrophobic heat of such a crowded space must be hell in summer: the unwashed stink of tired businessmen; the overpowering perfume wafting off young women trying too hard, and completely unaware of the effect on their surroundings; that peculiar stink, particular to old women and men (the peculiar odour of an aging body, unpleasantly mixed with the smell of mothballs). The winter would be just as unpleasant, with the sudden change in temperature from the outside cold into suffocating warmth still lending itself to sweat and claustrophobia and bad smells.

There would noises, too, of screaming babies and their mothers trying unsuccessfully to hush them; school children, unmindful of those trying their best to drown out their surroundings, jabbering away like a murder of screeching crows; that one person who had never bothered to check the noise-cancelling quality of his headphones, and was therefore blasting unpleasantly loud heavy metal music three to four passengers down from where he stood.

Shoto imagined it would be an overwhelming, absolutely terrible experience overall, and doing that every day? It defied the imagination.

(But some days, when the light would turn green and the bus rumbled to life and continued on its slow way down the street, he would have done anything to trade places with the businessman swaying on his feet, with the oblivious student, with the frustrated mother and her crying baby. On the days when Father was in the car, Shoto would sometimes close his eyes and imagine it was actually possible.)

This bus wouldn't be anywhere near as crowded, even after the whole of the class found themselves a seat. But a very small part of him did a little wiggle of excitement at the chance to do something so normal, for once.

Only a few minutes later, Shoto deeply regretted ever having such naive thoughts.

He'd managed to snag a seat for himself (through deliberate application of a dead-eyed stare towards anyone who made a move towards the empty space next to him) and settled back with his eyes closed. It shouldn't be more than a ten-minute ride or so, which was just long enough to close his eyes and rela…

_"Look, Sho-chan, see this?" _

_Shoto drops carelessly down onto his stomach and digs his elbows into the grass, uncaring of the moisture that immediately seeps through his sleeves. He squints in the direction the finger is indicating and immediately opens his eyes wide with delight. _

_"Nii-chan, is ant! Lots of ant!" he squeals, clapping his hands together in glee. _

_He looks up as a hand drops on his head. Toya smiles down at him with a big, gap-toothed grin, and tousles Shoto's hair with casual roughness. _

_"It's called an ant-hill and it's where all the ants live! There's one big mommy ant—she's called the queen—and a bunch of girl ants that go around finding food and taking care of the house and stuff!" _

_Shoto leans closer to the small dark hole in the ground, only noticeable by the light-colored dirt surrounding it in a small, pale mountain, and from the occasional little black ant that moves in or out of it. "No boy? What about daddy?" _

_There is no answer. Shoto cranes his neck behind him, confused, and sees Toya, still smiling down at him… but something isn't quite right. The sun creates a sort of halo around his full-head of crimson-red hair and puts his face in shadow, giving it a strangely dark, menacing edge. _

_"There is a daddy ant," he says, after a moment. He says it slowly, pensively, and Shoto feels a sudden tightening in his lungs that in context, makes absolutely no sense. _

_He tries moving and finds, to his building horror, that he can't move a single muscle. _

_"There's a daddy ant, Shoto, but… he's not a nice ant, kid. He's not nice at all. The daddy ant is born with fire and brimstone in his voice and in his hands, and all the little boys he gives birth to breathe fire, too. They're bad and dangerous, Shoto, and they don't know how to build or create or be kind; they only know how to destroy. Look, do you see?" _

_Toya points again, and with a deep-seated dread building up in his stomach and sending his heart-beat throbbing in his ears, Shoto looks down to see noxious black smoke come pouring out of the little hole. _

_"Daddy and his boys only know how to burn." _

_Toya smiles at him one more time. Then the flames rise in glowing carnations of red and orange and yellow, and Shoto chokes on smoke and the pain of eager flames as everything disappears in an explosive gust of fire. _

_Pop-pop-pop-BOOM. _

"HA? What was that, you fucker? Say that to my face!"

Shoto awoke between one second and the next, breathing erratic, heartbeat running a marathon in his chest. The memory of flames licking their way up his body made his shaky hands spasm in his lap. He clenched them tightly into fists and breathed, slowly and deeply, in an attempt to bring himself down from the adrenaline.

In for seven seconds, pause for three, out for ten. In seven seconds, pause three, out ten.

"…You okay, Todoroki?" a voice asked, low and concerned.

Shoto blinked his eyes open, once, twice. Tilted his head at Tentacles who had gotten the seat behind him (because he couldn't manage eye contact right then) and gave a jerky nod.

"Yeah," he murmured in a hoarse voice. He appreciated the boy's discretion, even if Explosions's lack of volume control made it relatively unnecessary. "I… thank you. I'm alright."

"If you're sure," Tentacles replied, just as quietly. There was a thread of something like concern in his voice, which Shoto… wasn't really sure what to do with, actually, so he fell back on what he always did with things involving human interaction that he was unsure of: he ignored it.

"Do you lot ever shut up?" Aizawa-sensei called from the front of the bus. His blood-shot eyes squinted around at them as if he already knew the answer to that question… and hated it, desperately. He scrubbed a hand down his drawn face, and sighed. "Anyway, we're here, so stop fooling around. Iida, handle this."

Iida got to his feet once the bus rumbled to a stop, a deep whoosh of air escaping from the automatic doors as they swung open.

"Alright everyone, we have arrived at our destination! Please proceed to get off the bus in an orderly fashion—Sero-kun! I said in an orderly fas—Ojiro-kun! Your tail, please be mindful of where you're swinging—"

As he got up, Shoto accidentally made eye-contact with Tentacles; unable to avoid it this time without… committing some sort of social blunder that couldn't be excused away, he was sure, he nodded again, awkwardly, and was relieved when Tentacles only nodded back without further comment.

Perhaps there were students who could be trained to respond to non-verbal communication.

Shoto had already noticed the student with the craggy, dinosaur-like features had a tendency to communicate with hand signs, which made him feel optimistic. He was moderately proficient in JSL and ESL himself, out of necessity, and explaining away the need for sign language would be easier than trying to justify learning body language.

Then they were all being herded off the bus and into a large, domed building, and Shoto had no more time to think.

* * *

"Welcome to UA's largest search and rescue building off-campus! I like to call it the Unforeseen Simulation Joint, or the USJ for short!"

The Unforeseen Simulation Joint was, if the whispered conversation between Elbows and Shark Teeth was to be believed, similar to Universal Studios Japan in the way Mt. Takao (599m) was similar to Mt. Fuji (3,776m): essentially the same thing, but entirely different in what sort of experience you walked (or in one case, limped) away with.

Shoto listened with one ear to the differing opinions on the benefits of the USJ experience—

"Like, this place is ultra-cool and everything, but I could totally see a rescue operation happening if there were an earthquake at Universal Studios, you know? And that could totally work as rescue training! It's not like UA can't afford it, so they should totally, like, buy out the whole place for a day and set up some scenarios—"

"Ooooooh, wouldn't that be sick, rescuing some sweet mannequins facing an awful potential-death by upside-down roller coaster—"

"But in the event of a true catastrophe occurring, how would the faculty justify the unnecessary risk in removing such a large number of students from school grounds, at the same time, when UA is completely capable of hosting such training on its own grounds? Not to mention how unnecessarily distracting our surroundings would be—"

("..Where's All Might?"

"He ran out of time—")

"—I can see it being fun, actually! I wonder what the Water Disaster Zone is like; do you think they have water slides?"

"Eh, you think? I guess they do have slides coming down from the emergency exits in tall buildings sometimes—"

"—Tch, something actually fun had better fucking go down, cuz if not, I'm fuckin' ready to bring that shit myself—"

—While the rest of his concentration was spent on matching what he could see of his surroundings to 13-sensei's explanation of the objective of today's lesson and the different zones they would be utilizing in their training.

"As I'm sure you're aware, my quirk, Black Hole, can suck up anything it comes into contact with and turn it into dust."

His eyes spotted and mentally cataloged every visual clue he could spot: there, the Earthquake Zone; here, the Fire Zone; there, the Hurricane Zone, with the glass-domed roof clouded by an ominous, swirling black. Shoto flicked his fingers, absently coating, then defrosting, trickles of frozen liquid from their tips as he considered the pros and cons of ending up in any particular Zone.

"I've used this power over the years to save many lives, but that's not all my power can do; if I chose to, it could just as easily be turned against someone, and used to hurt, to kill. I'm not the only one here today with a quirk that could potentially be used in such a way, am I?

"In the superhuman society of today, where personal quirks are stringently regulated and must legally be certified, that may not seem like a concern. Nevertheless, the possibility always exists, and on your path to become pro-heroes, you must never forget that the slightest misstep with your powers could lead to someone's death."

If given the choice, Shoto would pick the Blizzard Zone without thinking twice, but was that the smart option?

Part of the point of this exercise (though 13-sensei hadn't mentioned it, it would no doubt come up at some point) was, Shoto was sure, for the teachers to see what each student would do when faced with a natural disaster their quirk or training didn't allow them to naturally combat. A lot of things about an individual could be uncovered from something as simple as throwing them into a situation outside of their comfort zone: how someone reacted under pressure, their ability to think outside the box, their creativity, intelligence, reaction times, innate skill.

Simply put, the best way to get the measure of a man was to toss him into an unpleasant situation and watch to see what happened.

"With Aizawa-sensei's fitness tests, you discovered the limitless possibilities to your powers; with All Might's Hero vs. Villain battle training, I believe you were able to experience the dangers inherent in using those powers against another person. This class is a fresh start, where you will learn how to use your quirks to save people's lives. You do not have your powers for the purpose of hurting others! I hope that today, you walk away from this class knowing that your powers exist for you to help, not to harm."

Another possible part of this excursion was to familiarize each student with the protocols to follow in the event of any possible disaster, something Shoto was sure Aizawa-sensei would be testing them on at some point in the future.

All these things could be inferred with a bit of thought, an acceptable level of intellect, and the willingness to be proven wrong.

All things considered, Shoto had the distinct—if dismaying—feeling that he would most definitely not be ending up in the Blizzard Zone. The most likely options were looking to be either the Earthquake Zone, or the Fire Zone: the first because Shoto's quirk was ill-suited to the enclosed spaces that made up most of the zones (unless one had impeccable control, which Shoto did, but the teachers wouldn't know that just yet), and the second because… well.

For the second, Shoto would have to hope they hadn't noticed the distinct lack of flames in his repertoire up till this point, and would therefore not be inclined to attempt to change that—

A flicker, nearly out of his line of sight.

Shoto flicked his eyes to the side, only vaguely curious, and immediately jerked his entire head around as hair began to rise on the back of his neck.

One light flickering out was one thing: light bulbs met their natural end at the most inconvenient of times, and even in a location twice the size of a football field, created for the sole purpose of running simulation exercises, all things came to their natural ends eventually.

But one light, then immediately after, a whole row of them? And not just dimming, but shattering?

Between one breath and the next, the air changed.

At first, it was a mere spot in an otherwise colorful landscape. But then it grew, and it grew before their startled eyes until a swollen, purple-tinged whirlpool of emptiness had swallowed the whole of the Central Plaza.

"What the—" someone began to say.

"Everyone, stick together and fall back!" Aizawa-sensei barked, talking over the muttered question, and shocking all of them out of their stupefaction.

Shoto's adrenaline levels had been climbing since that first fizzle-crack of a dying bulb, and he clenched his hands around the humming running from the tips of his fingers, up through his buzzing brain and swooshing down to his jittery toes. For the first time in a long, long time, Shoto almost thought he could use his fire willingly, if given adequate incentive.

Something was wrong. Something was _very _wrong, and the wrongness echoed down to his very bones.

Elbows popped his head out next to Shoto and squinted at the swirling black vortex. "What's that all about? Sensei? Is this a part of our training?"

Shark Teeth scratched his head and added in his two-cents. "Is this that, you know, 'Haha, it's already started suckkkeeeerrs—' thing Present Mic pulled at the Entrance Exams?"

"Get back," Shoto snapped, shoving Elbows behind him roughly before he could think it through. Not looking away from the hair-raising scene taking place some 100 meters in front of them, Shoto continued: "Something's not right here. Listen to Sensei and get back."

The black spot of negative space began to spit out humanoid forms, one at a time at first, then two, then three, until the entire courtyard was teeming with people.

From where they stood at the top of the tall staircase leading down to the Plaza, Shoto thought they almost looked like ants… and then had the fervent, unrealistic wish that they would indeed turn out to be so.

"13, protect the students," Aizawa-sensei intoned solemnly. Then he was pulling down bright yellow goggles, capture weapon beginning to float about his shoulder as his quirk activated, and Eraserhead flung himself down the stairs and into battle.

13 physically pushed Shoto, and the rest of the class, behind them as Eraserhead engaged the villains in battle.

He was good. Shoto watched, tension thrumming in his limbs, as the underground hero utilized the long, versatile white strands of his capture weapon to trip, tie up and fling villains against each other, and alternated throwing in his quirk (an act which gained a lot of very surprised villains, who were soon too deeply unconscious to do anything else) at unpredictable intervals.

For a good five minutes, Eraserhead single-handedly took on a crowd of easily twenty villains, some with incredibly tricky quirks; he even shot down a villain with a mutant-type Quirk (one Erasure, Eraserhead's quirk, was apparently unable to erase) with a quick toss of his capture weapon and a twist-kick-punch that threw them on their back and knocked them out like a light.

For a hero who thrived on battles fought in the dark anonymity of night, where Shoto imagined there were many more opportunities for silent ambushes and even more silent takedowns, he was doing stupendously well.

Even so...

Freckles summed his thoughts up succinctly, his eyes widened with panic and concern: Eraserhead was doing well... but it wasn't going to last. His quirk and his talents were both not suited to head-on attacks, something the villains were quickly noticing, and if something didn't change fast, he was going to get slowly but surely pushed back and overwhelmed.

Suddenly, the air in front of them began to swirl and twist, the view of the courtyard obscured by quickly stretching fingers of smoky black; then they had their own problems to contend with, as the villain with glowing yellow eyes and inky-black smoke for a body teleported Shoto, and select members of his class, into parts unknown before they could do more than attempt to fight back.

* * *

There were worse places he could have ended up.

When the villain's teleportation quirk spat him out, after three endlessly long seconds of darkness where he hadn't been sure what was up and what was down, Shoto found himself facing a good dozen or so villains, none of them looking half as discombobulated as Shoto, and not one of them seeming anywhere near as unhappy as Shoto was to be there.

Thankfully, the Landslide Zone provided only mild cover and little in the way of projectiles—for the villains. This left Shoto free to throw his cold-half out, in whatever shape or form he pleased, with abandon, something that often led to the villains being buried alive in a coffin of ice, or thrown head over heels by an unexpected avalanche—appropriate, in the landslide zone, if of a slightly different make. Shoto was quite fond of the irony.

(He was kind enough to leave them breathing room in every instance, but not much else)

When the dozen or so villains that had appeared in the landslide zone along with him had been either knocked out or otherwise put out of commission, Shoto ran hot fingers over his lightly-trembling side: cold, but still far from at his limit.

"Is this really it? Pathetic," he murmured to the villains before him, his eyes still on his fingers. "Taken down by a mere child... Do you have any pride, at all? No, no need to speak, the answer's obvious."

He sighed, shaking his head in faux-sadness. "You should be ashamed of yourselves."

When the villains unanimously bristled, murderous intent wafting off of them in clouds,

Shoto nearly chuckled.

Was he playing with them? Yes. Was he enjoying humiliating them? Yes again. Was this behavior befitting a future hero, one who had every intention of reaching and permanently taking the Number One spot? Not in the slightest.

But while Shoto stared down the Villains, their enraged screeching nearly unintelligible from the effect of their chattering teeth, he decided he was owed this much.

There was a thin, invisible curtain drawn across the boundary between his surface thoughts and the deeper emotions that lay underneath, and right now, Shoto could see the dark, sickening ichor of terror-fury-panic smearing against the barrier barely holding it back. The more shallow parts of him, that saw that awaiting horror and, while accepting of its existence, wanted no part of it, was perfectly content to embrace the well of superiority that itched to bring a sneer to his face. Anything to keep the knowledge of the true danger of their current circumstances from tearing fear through his mind: of how they were cut off from all communication, of knowing he hadn't been the only one cast into a pit of potential vipers (and knowing he was one of the few who could view those vipers as mice, and handle them accordingly), of knowing that help was... probably not coming.

That fear aside, Shoto knew he was actually perfectly suited for this unanticipated trial: when you were at the top, you stood alone, and The Number Two hero had ensured he learned that lesson, over and over and over again, until it stuck.

Now, Shoto prowled menacingly forward as he prepared to teach the villains a lesson of their own. This lesson they would learn, over and over and over again, for as long as was necessary.

"Now tell me... what is this I hear about the Symbol of Peace?"

* * *

When he had squeezed the last bit of information he possibly could out of the villains, Shoto aimed a punch at the last one and let his hand drop, torn.

They had seemed so certain: All Might may not be here, but what they had intended for him would have ensured he didn't walk out of the training facility alive.

Even knowing the danger had mercifully passed, Shoto couldn't fight a strong surge of unease. The mere existence of something purportedly strong enough to destroy the pinnacle of strength—the invincible Symbol of Peace—was unthinkable; that they were so deeply certain of its presence, here, in the same building within which Shoto stood, was terrifying.

It couldn't be allowed to stand. Shoto knew that the smart thing to do would be to make his way back to the entrance (a daunting enough prospect, knowing the warp-villain could still be there, blocking the way) and make 13 aware of these developments, but… All Might knew what the hero would be able to actually accomplish with that information. While knowledge is power, and what you knew would (theoretically) be less likely to hurt you, the odds of all of them walking out of here in one piece was… not likely.

What Shoto really wanted to do was continue on to the different zones and assist his classmates, who would no doubt be floundering and getting themselves injured right about now. His quirk was well below its usage limit, taking down the villains had been a walk in the park, and after all, wasn't rescue training all about saving the weak and the helpless?

"Wow, Todoroki-kun, you're really stro—woah, _hey hey hey_, it's just me!"

Before the words had finished forming in the empty air next to a collapsed building, Shoto had turned and shot out a massive column of ice, his adrenaline spiking as he silently cursed himself for his inattention. How had he missed the villain? And where were they? He was sure he'd gotten all of them—

A rock rose to nearly face-level from the ground, about where the call had originated, and began to wiggle with enthusiasm.

"Todoroki-kun! It's me, Hagakure! Hagakure Tooru!"

The familiarity in the voice niggled at him, enough that Shoto abandoned his next attack to cautiously move in the direction of the floating rubble.

"...um, you, um. Do know who I am...?"

Stress and paranoia had stripped him of all the social niceties he may have bothered with before this moment. After a second of thought, he bluntly stated: "No."

"Eehhhhh, that's so hurtful?" the voice whined. It was actually starting to sound familiar, and Shoto thought he recalled something, something to do with gloves, floating in the air—

...Oh. Invisible girl. She had been on the team with Tails during All Might's Battle Training.

"Hagakure Tooru," he said slowly, tasting the name on his tongue. The girl with the quirk that turned her totally invisible, so long as she wasn't wearing clothes. The thought alone should probably have turned his face red, his hands fidgeting; Shoto instead found himself feeling a strong burst of envy. What he would have given to be born invisible, instead of evenly split in half between the side of himself that he hated, and the side that reminded him of pain and grief.

The rock jumped up and down, and a corresponding scatter of pebbles on the ground made Shoto look down and furrow his brow.

She was barefoot, wasn't she? Didn't that hurt?

Immediately, a thought jumped into his head: what would have happened if he had caught her in a sweep of his ice?

The thought was too horrifying to contemplate, and Shoto shied away from it in favor of a thought that had just occurred to him.

"Did you hear anything the villains were discussing?" He demanded, absently shooting a coating of ice over a villain who had come-to earlier than expected and seemed to actually be making headway as he tried to chip through the ice. He seemed to finally give up, then, his lips blue and energy sapped. Shoto took pity on him and knocked him out again.

"Yeah, something about All Might?" Hagakure said hesitantly, a little closer now, proving to Shoto once and for all that his classmates were strange, impossible creatures, whose priorities and lack of focus made absolutely no sense.

"I just finished questioning all of the villains, how could you not—no, never mind that, I need you to go to 13, and Aizawa-sensei, if you can, and tell them the villains have a way to fight All Might, and I believe them when they say it will work."

Ignoring Hagakure's gasp of horror, he iced another waking villain, knowing the time was ticking by, knowing that each second could mean the difference between getting out of here with all of them alive… and not.

"Go, as fast as you can!" he barked, talking over the invisible voice that protested, saying, "But what about you?"

"I'll handle the villains, then see if I can find anyone else who needs help! Now go!"

There was a small shower of scattered pebbles, then the sound of bare feet slapping down on a partly-stone, partly-earthen ground, slowly heading farther and farther away. Then there were only the sounds of barely-breathing villains, and the far off boom-boom-crack of things and people breaking, cracking, and tearing apart.

Shoto spared one last, barely-guilty glance for the still-frozen villains and their potentially awful injuries, before heading towards the Central Plaza, where the loudest sounds had originated.

They had known what they were walking into by infiltrating the building; they deserved what was coming to them.

* * *

His first instinct had been to head to the Fire Zone.

Despite his hang-ups with his quirk, Shoto was better equipped than any of his classmates to deal with fire. For the sake of potentially saving lives in an emergency, Shoto was fully capable of compartmentalizing and repressing his issues for long enough to get the job done. He headed to the dome (its glass roof shifting in constant, sweeping waves of yellow-orange-red light), his boots crunching on broken glass and gravel and concrete, and was fully convinced he could manage it—until he was a handful of feet away from the concrete walls, and close enough to feel the heat.

Fire bloomed golden petals in the parts of his mind that Shoto had shut off and away, heat inching through the cracks in his mental walls, and without meaning to, he physically shied away from the entrance to the large, domed building. He stopped a bit of a ways away, stunned at his instinctive reaction. Shoto told himself to go back, urged his body to move; but his arms and legs trembled and stayed frozen, and he knew that with the way time was so very much against them, he couldn't afford to waste it here when there were plenty of other people he could help.

Bitterly disappointed in himself, Shoto turned instead to the Central Plaza where he had been hearing loud, destructive noises, distantly, for a while now; and as he headed closer, those noises grew clearer. If any of his classmates became injured because Endeavor had seen fit to tear off a part of his burning self and force it onto a _yukionna _who had wanted nothing to do with it, then Shoto would...

The thought hovered, unfinished, as Shoto picked up his pace and ran towards the noises.

* * *

The villain's appearance (a heteromorphic quirk, maybe?) was a frightening thing.

Even the small glimpse Shoto had stolen as he let loose a carefully-controlled arc of ice at the villain holding All Might (_All Might, the symbol of peace, possibly the strongest man alive, how in the world—)_ threatened to sear itself into his brain, forever to sit there and haunt him in the day and traumatize him at night:

Tiny eyes (oddly blank and inexpressive) staring down from above a large, painfully-sharp looking beak, filled with piercing rows of teeth. Dark blue, thick-looking skin with numerous scars and scratches, trailed down massive, bulging triceps and biceps. Long, jagged talons, digging deeply into flesh, turning the Mightiest Hero's white shirt a deepening red. And above the bulging muscles, the talons and unsettling eyes, was the pink-grey of an exposed brain.

The large body of the villain was half-submerged in the black pool of the Warp-villain's quirk, with the upper half of their body holding down All Might's torso—kept still by the talons embedded in his left side—while the lower half rose up from the ground and was kept secured by the tight grip All Might had on their waist. Even as Shoto ran, dodging Shark Teeth who jumped over to run alongside him and a flying Explosions who had come bursting out of nowhere, the Warp-villain was pulling All Might into the sinister darkness of their quirk. His hindbrain screamed at him, yelling that this was not going to end well, and that was when Shoto struck, freezing the parts of the hulking form that were detached enough from All Might to not affect him.

With the new addition of Shoto's ice, and Explosions's distracting of the Warp-villain with his quirk and manic grin, the Symbol of Peace would hopefully gain the upper hand.

(A statement Shoto had never dreamed, even in his worst nightmares, that he would ever have to say.)

"I heard you have a plan," Shoto taunted the villains absentmindedly, his eyes fixed on the frozen limbs of his victim. His fingers twitched, prepared to cast another net should the villain so much as flex. "I heard you had something strong enough to take down All Might. All I'm seeing right now is a mindless animal, only good enough to be thrown at a target and hope for the best."

Freckles was there, a little ways back from where he had been violently—and knowing Explosions, unintentionally—rescued from the Warp-villain's dark embrace. Shoto spared a thought for the boy, one that wondered at the relieved tears on his cheeks and found them oddly disproportionate to the danger he had been in.

The monstrous villain heaved, but All Might held them down as he pulled out the appendages holding him captive and shot away. Shoto, relief threatening to loosen his tightly contained vigilance, added, a little breathlessly: "Villains really do run their mouths when they've been cornered, huh?"

Warp-villain tightly controlled in the grip of his lightly-sparking hand, Explosions turned to him and sneered. "Freakin' _Edgeshot_, Thermostat, you really like to fuckin' run your mouth, don't ya?"

Coming from Explosions, that was incredibly insulting, and also hypocritical. Sadly, despite how much his giddy relief made him want to reply in kind, Shoto was cognizant of the fact that now was neither the time nor the place, so he settled for rolling his eyes and ignoring him.

It was then that another villain (an incredibly unsettling one, with graying hands attached to various parts of his body that Shoto suddenly recalled having seen, back when the villains first emerged from the portal) intoned darkly: "_Nomu_."

And the monstrous villain began to haul themselves out of their frozen prison.

The snap-crack of limbs, so deeply frozen that they were simply falling off from the stress of the pressure imposed on them, echoed throughout the open space, freezing Shoto in turn, as if he too had a quirk holding him still. It was only for a second, and Shoto was quick to bring back his focus, but the shock of knowing that his quirk had done that...

The point at one wounded shoulder, where ice had detached an arm, began to bubble. Before their collective horrified eyes, muscles, exposed nerves and sinew bulged and writhed, and began to form a new appendage. Apparently the Monster—for it was a monster, wasn't it—had a regenerative quirk to go with its shock absorption.

The villains' confidence in their trump card was starting to make unfortunate sense.

Then, the Monster moved. There was a moment where Shoto thought he saw something like an after-image: a blur of dark, moving limbs, and a cloud of sand that burst upwards in its wake; that apparition then headed directly for the stunned face of Explosions, who definitely would not be able to dodge in time.

A split-second of a half-taken breath later, Shoto was no longer where he had been previously standing.

"The fuck?" Explosions exclaimed, his already gravity-defying blond hair flying about him in the strong gust of wind All Might—it had to have been All Might—left in his wake. Shark Teeth was there, as was Freckles, both looking just as shell-shocked, and Shoto sharply turned his attention to the long gouges in the concrete ground, leading in a long trail down some 100 meters away to a broken wall and an opaque cloud of debris.

Shoto hadn't even seen him move.

When the cloud parted, bits of rubble and stone falling to the ground, what it revealed sent a deep shot of fear through Shoto's chest.

All Might, looking rough and beat up, arm locked in front of him to block the blow. That even All Might should falter from a mere punch...

Where had they found such a terrifying creature?

The villain with the hands (Handy Man, Shoto dubbed him spitefully) began to monologue, faking innocence as he protested that he had only been protecting his poor, unsuspecting comrade from the heroes' brutal attacks. All Might called him on his bullshit, but Handy Man only grinned unsettlingly and didn't refute him.

"Get them," he said instead. "Kurogiri, Nomu. I'll handle the children."

Shoto settled into a defensive stance instantly, refusing to allow budding fear to mar his focus, and tracked the approaching Handy Man with his eyes—

And then there was a hurricane, and All Might.

What unfolded before them next was a battle of monsters:

And it was a battle. Wind sent concussive blasts from the center of the conflict, threatening to rupture the concrete walls and purposely-collapsed buildings around them. Shoto had to put up an arm to shield his face and brace his entire body, at one point, as the strength with which each massive, powerful fist meeting its mark (both blue and fisted beige fighting to gain the upper hand in a battle of monster vs. monstrous ability) nearly knocked him off his feet. The two villains were not so lucky, and Shoto watched with distinct pleasure as both Handy Man (_Shigaraki Tomura_, his mind supplied darkly) and the Warp-villan 'Kurogiri' were sent flying.

Being on the sidelines was... not pleasant. Still, Shoto watched, half his attention on the fight, the rest on the two disoriented villains and his stunned classmates, and made no move to step in. After all, what could he, or anyone, do? This was the battlefield of the gods (a fight between Zeus and Hades, between Odin and Jormungandr), and a mere mortal stood less than no chance of making even a single iota of difference.

And anyway, if watching from a distance was this terrifying, Shoto had zero interest in seeing it up close.

It had become a fight between an immovable object and an unstoppable force, and Shoto watched as slowly, by increments, the positions of who was who switched, and the unstoppable force—All Might—began to chip away at the immovable object—the Monster—fighting to keep its place.

It happened between one punch and the next. All Might (in a move nearly too quick to follow with the naked eye) caught the villain by the arm and swung, around and around, as their momentum carried them high in the air... and threw the 'Nomu' down to the ground with enough force to shatter the hard ground below it.

Eyes watering, Shoto squinted at the unbelievable sight before him, determined not to miss a single second. He wasn't entirely successful, and what happened next was too difficult to track, but he (along with, no doubt, everyone within the building) heard the words that boomed out of All Might's mouth and echoed throughout the courtyard:

"Tell me, Villain, have you ever heard these words?"

Concrete blocks flew, wind buffeted, a clenched fist cocked and electric-blue eyes glinted triumphantly:

"_Go forever beyond_! PLUS ULTRA!"

A punch landed, a dark figure went flying through the glass-domed ceiling, and in its wake stood All Might: Victorious.

A few things happened, then, in quick succession:

First, the remaining villains (more specifically Handy Man, who had flown into a rage shortly after the Nomu disappeared into the distant skies) were not perturbed by this apparent win and seemed like they were going to push their quickly dwindling advantage to further attempt to take down All Might.

Next, instead of letting All Might work out how to fix the issue, Freckles leaped into the fray; a quick jump with his powerful quirk—one that was both ill-thought, doomed to failure, and somehow too quick for Shoto or even All Might to stop—that shattered his leg as it left the ground, nearly ended with Handy Man's quirk splintering the skin off of his face.

Finally, with the distinctive crack of a bullet, a hole appeared in the hand outstretched to destroy Freckles's face; a few crack-crack-cracks quickly proceeded to leave a few more, throwing the villain back and away from his potential victim.

Help had arrived at last.

* * *

There was something going on between All Might and Midoriya.

Shoto thought this to himself as he watched the ambulance drive away, carrying with it the unconscious forms of the Symbol of Peace and Shoto's badly injured, mysterious classmate.

It was almost as if… but no.

Shoto shook the head and the thought away, ruefully amused at his own foolishness. What did he know about fathers and sons, anyway?

Almost since the start of school, if he really stopped to think about it, Midoriya and All Might had had a strange sort of chemistry about them, a comfortable familiarity that had no place existing between the Number One Hero and a student whose most memorable quality was his ability to shatter his limbs with his quirk. In spite of that chemistry, however, comparing their interactions to those between a father and son was ludicrous and absolutely fanciful, at best.

And really, what did Shoto know?

_(The hand around his neck squeezed. _

_It wasn't so hard as to cut off his air supply... but the panic from knowing the person controlling that hand would happily do just that, as easy as breathing, plus the feeling of having heat wrapped suffocatingly around his throat, was enough to make Shoto choke and splutter and fail to get any oxygen in his lungs. _

_"Not good enough," a cold voice said. He was thrown aside a moment later, and the wall reached out to catch him in its hard, unforgiving embrace.) _

Fathers and sons had only ever been a thing of pain and rage and tears of frustration, to Shoto. Even if, at some distant point in his past, things had been different? Just knowing the way things had changed only a few years down the road was enough to discourage him from attempting to recall those times any further.

And really, when it came down to it, Shoto was curious, but not enough (just yet) to stick his nose in an area it was so obviously unwelcome.

So he turned away and walked to where the rest of his classmates had gathered to wait for instructions, telling himself to put it out of his mind.

And he did try, as Hagakure cheerfully admitted she had been in the same Zone as him (a terrifying reminder, as he could have easily wrapped her up in the ice he'd cast on his group of unfortunate villains, not even noticing until it was too la—no. No, he wouldn't think of that-), as a police detective came to ask them questions and update them on their teachers' status's (_Aizawa-sensei… 13…_), and when one of the teachers finally came around to hustle them into a bus and back to school. He had other, much more important things to be worried about: like how the villains had managed to break through UA's vaunted security; how the villains had known where they would be at that hour; how they had known All Might would be there; and how they had managed to find a Quirk strong enough to stand up to All Might…

Things which, again, were not his business to worry about, but seemed like much more logical things to be ruminating over than any potential relationship that may or may not exist between All Might and his classmate.

(Even then, the thoughts lingered: _What are you to each other? What is it that you're hiding?_)


	6. Talking Body

Warning: child abuse and so many names taken in vain.

* * *

"Aren't you coming, Todoroki-kun?"

It was the first day of school after the incident at USJ. Homeroom had passed (with the unexpected addition of Aizawa-sensei and a reminder of the swiftly approaching Sports Festival; deciding which was the more shocking revelation had been a struggle), the bell for the end of first period and come and gone, and Shōto was sitting where he had been since: at his desk, notebook in hand, mind an empty, dark place.

Home had never been a refuge, but after they had been dispersed the day before (early, and after they had been looked over by the school nurse, Recovery Girl, and assured that their parents would be updated on the situation), Shoto had held the vaguest hope that the vibrating tension under his skin would settle, upon seeing the familiar visage of the family estate's front gates swinging slowly open.

The tension under his skin _had_ settled, to be fair: upon seeing Shoto in the entrance way, Father—no, Endeavor, with his hair billowing flame and eyebrows sternly pulled together in a disapproving frown—had pulled him into the dojo, and had him demonstrate the moves he had used to take down the villains. None of them had pleased him. Hours of endless drills and barked demands to move faster, do better, _be_ better later, and Shoto had been allowed to collapse in his room without even making it to the bed, the previous tension gone in exchange for his entire right-side being a frost-bitten, throbbing ache from his overused quirk.

Sleep had been quick in coming, but didn't stay constant. In brief intervals, nightmares of hands and portals and frozen limbs snapping would have him shooting awake, only the pain in his body reminding him that it was over, it wasn't real, he needed to push the anxiety and nausea away and sleep, _he needed to sleep— _

Morning had come too quickly.

He looked up at the sound of his name, and immediately leaned back upon nearly coming in contact with Pinky's outstretched face.

"...going where?"

"Lunch?" she said, tilting her head quizzically like this was an obvious thing he should have realized on his own.

Shoto leaned back even further in his chair, the better to look down his nose at her and affect cold disinterest.

"Where and when I choose to eat my lunch is none of your business," he said, irritation slipping into the words. Had these children been raised by wolves? The constant hedging into his personal space was beginning to really affect his control. A familiar, creepy-crawling feeling that had stayed dormant over the brief period of normal high school lessons (English with pro-hero Present Mic, whose lack volume control made it extremely difficult to space out, followed by mathematics with pro-hero Ectoplasm, whose clones would pop up without warning to check that nobody was taking the chance for a quick nap) began to rear its ugly head.

Shoto ignored it, because it was still manageable, and because he could feel the stares of a few of his classmates on his sides and back. Scratching now would be too noticeable.

"I… guess that's true," Pinky said uncomfortably. She finally removed her hands from the desk and leaned back, bringing one hand up to run through her hair. He noticed two bone-yellow horns peeking out of the mess of her hair, something that had escaped his notice until now.

"I mean, you don't have to come with us or anything, it's not like we're gonna force you? Just, Denki totally put his foot in it the first day of school-"

"Hey!" Someone (probably Denki? Whoever that was, though it sounded a lot like Lightning boy, Kaminari) shouted from the front of the room. Pinky continued like she'd never been interrupted:

"_—_And we weren't able to catch you after school ended, and you just disappeared yesterday right after… well. And, you know, before the whole intruder alert fiasco, Kaminari said you went and disappeared on everyone, too, and with everything that happened at USJ… Sorry, I'm rambling, but anyway! I've kind of been thinking that me and this idiot gave you a bad first impression so, like, if you wanted to, we were gonna head to the cafeteria and maybe you could join us…?"

Shoto stared at her, for long enough that he could see her body language turning awkward, fingers beginning to fidget and torso unconsciously leaning to get away.

"I… thank you. But I… have my own lunch," he said finally—slowly, with each word tasting strange in his mouth.

Pinky twitched her shoulders, out of surprise at his response, or surprise that he had answered at all. She cast a look over her shoulder, doubtless at this 'Denki', and gave the nervous little laugh he'd heard from her before, a memory distant and just as quickly gone from his mind.

"Right, okay, had to try. Have a nice lunch, I guess, and uh… see you after?"

She didn't wait for a response, which was good, because Shoto didn't have one. He watched her back as she skipped away, watched her meet with Kaminari and Shark Teeth, and watched until they left the room—and even then, he continued to stare.

These people were so strange. People were…so strange. And confusing.

A quick glance at the clock showed he had thirty-five minutes to eat. The classroom had mostly emptied. The only students remaining were the student who could control animals (and got so excited the one time Shoto signed in JSL to him) who was even now quietly getting up to leave the room, lunch bag in hand; and the big, multi-armed student, Tentacles (whose name he still couldn't quite recall either) and who—

—who was staring straight at Shoto.

His hands spasmed against his consent, though he managed to keep his face still. What had the other boy seen? What was he thinking?

"What do you want?" Shoto demanded. His skin crawled at the attention. He longed to duck out from under it and look away, but the boy's level stare was too disconcerting to give anything but his full attention.

"Nothing much. I'm Mezo Shoji, by the way, since we never really got around to introducing ourselves. Everyone calls me Shoji. I was just thinking about asking if you wanted to eat together. You looked like you wanted to be alone, but you and I seem to be the only ones not going to the cafeteria—other than Koda-kun, I mean."

'Koda' must be the other student. Shoto considered trying to remember the name, but just the thought of it was exhausting. Lunch with someone else, even in the quiet of the classroom? The thought brought the beginnings of nausea threatening to fill his mouth with saliva, his gag reflex gearing up for another round of Let's See How Much Stomach Acid We Can Expel.

"Hey, come on, you don't have to look like that," 'Shoji' said. Shoji hadn't gotten out of his seat, but he did turn his body fully to face Shoto. Shoto noticed what had skipped his attention before—at the end of two of his tentacles eyes had appeared. Part of Shoji's quirk appeared to be the ability to add eyes, ears and mouths to his appendages as often as he pleased, something Shoto vaguely recalled seeing during Battle Training with All Might.

Quirks came in all shapes and sizes, and Shoto had never been one to care about appearances: what bothered him now, as four eyes focused on him, was the feeling of being trapped in someone else's gaze, unrelenting and inescapable.

_("Not good enough," Father snarled. Fire burst to life in his hand; around them, the glittering walls of ice steamed and melted under the heat, countless little flames reflected off their translucent surfaces like a million hovering fireflies. _

_"If you insist on this ridiculous belief that you can be powerful enough without utilizing your fire—the fire I gave to you, which incalculable numbers of people would kill to have even a small part of—then you have to have something good enough to back it up. And right now, boy? Right now that something is nowhere _near _good enough!" _

_An explosion of heat tunneled past the walls of ice. Shoto tried to dodge, but his leg collapsed under him, and he couldn't help the cry that left his lips as his shirt caught fire. The ice walls made pop-pop-pop noises like firecrackers as the heat created deep cracks within them. _

_"You. Are. Weak!" _

_The fire was relentless, billowing in great, blinding swathes, greedily swallowing up the oxygen in the room and attempting to devour anything it could reach. Shoto rolled and dodged, blinking back the tears of frustration and pain that tried to fall against his will, and shot back shards and pillars of ice that got smaller and smaller the longer he continued. He had fought and bled for control of his right side, and against any other hero or villain, Shoto believed he could more than hold his own. But against Endeavor? Sometimes it felt that no matter how long he trained, how hard and how much he strained to utilize his ice with more precision, strength, and quantity, he would never be strong enough to do more than try to keep from collapsing under the burning pressure of his power. _

_"You will never be the Number One Hero at this rate! Push past me, boy! Throw yourself at every obstacle as if you were about to die!" _

_A hundred icy-blue eyes reflected in the frozen walls, the condemnation in their depths as searing as the heat streaking past Shoto's face as he dodged, gasping, for the hundredth time. _

_"If you cannot even stand up against me, you will not survive even one second against All Might! You are a disgrace! Get rid of this ice and start again!") _

Shoji's arm-eyes blinked once, twice, then closed. Shoto unconsciously leaned forward with interest as those eyes folded into the appendages, shifting to form a mouth on one, an ear on the other.

"It was just a thought, anyhow. I'm perfectly okay just sitting here and eating by myself. Maybe some other time."

Without waiting for a response, Shoji turned back in his seat and began looking through his bag, pulling out a wrapped parcel, a thermos and a packet of chips.

It was Shoto's turn to blink. That was it? No pressuring him to socialize, to push past the fog of tiredness, irritation, and nausea, and make an attempt at being a normal person?

Without meaning to, Shoto relaxed into his chair, a quiet breath escaping him. Feeling a bit odd but not enough to want to think it through, he pulled out his own lunch and began to unwrap it with a quiet, "_Itadakimasu_," echoed by his fellow lunch mate. They both looked up as they said it, surprised, but quickly turned back to their own lunches. Still, as he pulled out his chopsticks and began separating the bones from his salmon, Shoto felt his lips pull up into a quiet smile.

* * *

Lunch ended too quickly. Shoto felt he had barely closed his lunch box before his classmates were trickling back into the room, in groups of two and threes, chattering cheerfully amongst themselves. The nausea had mostly faded by the time he had forced down a few bites of his rice, and his appetite had quickly returned. It would have been nice to have a few more minutes to himself, but Shoto quietly inhaled and told himself to be thankful that he had gotten that time at all.

Shoji had been surprisingly pleasant company. There was something about eating quietly with another person—and not in a cold, awkward silence he was unfortunately very well acquainted with—had brought to mind the times when it was just him and Fuyumi home and they could take their time eating and enjoying each other's company. Without the looming presence of their father, they could enjoy the silence, the quiet companionship, the gentle gestures and body language they had grown accustomed to using to check that the other was okay.

(The rice bowl with the chipped edge and the smiling kitten placed on his tray; a chopstick holder, in the shape of a pink gecko lying on its back:

_Do you need a distraction? _

Ketchup on a hamburger, drawn in a smiley face; pancakes, in the shapes of bears and dogs and puppies:

_Do you need cheering up?_

An offer to get seconds, conveniently putting whoever was offering between Father and the other person, granting a few second's reprieve:

_Do you need help?_)

They had a dozen simple ways of asking after the other sibling's wellbeing without risking unwanted attention. Shoto had learned to watch Fuyumi's body: whether she was turned away from the table; where she put her hands; whether she was staring blankly forward or doing her best to disappear into her chair. Shoto imagined that his sister had learned a few tricks of her own, over the years. There had certainly been times when he'd been tempted to respond to some unbearable comment from Father, but a light touch to his leg or a deliberate clatter of tableware would have him shutting his mouth and bearing with it_—_because a momentary loss of temper would have considerably worse consequences for the both of them than a blow to his pride.

He was used reading Father's body: he had learned to recognize the signs of an impending explosion; of an angered rant on the unearned reputations of other pro-heroes; of the days where any wrong word could lead to a harsh session in the dojo on top of what was already on the day's agenda.

Shoto had learned to read the lines of eyes and shoulders, of purposely loosened or crossed arms, of leg muscles tensed to turn or move forward, of the subtle intricacies of hands and the tendons on them.

Faces were confusing and never told the true story.

The muscles in Endeavor's face were at their most relaxed when he was seconds away from letting his temper loose. When Father's mouth turned up at the corners, it usually preceded the cruelest of words coming out of it. Fuyumi smiled the most when her eyes were at their most scared. Shoto found that so long as he concentrated on unclenching his jaw and loosening his facial muscles, his mouth would cease to pull downwards in a frown and he could come off as calm and unaffected.

People lied with their mouths and their faces, but hardly ever with their eyes and bodies.

His classmates had mostly seated themselves; the bell for second period would be ringing soon. Shoto lightly tapped at the roughness of the skin around his left eye and let the gentle touch smooth out the wrinkles in his forehead and brow, let the muscles in his jaw unclench. His back and shoulders had grown steadily tenser as time passed and his classmates filed in, but there was nothing for that.

People saw what they wanted to see, and so long as you concentrated on lying with your face, nobody would notice what you were saying with your body.

(Mother had taught him this lesson—with a kettle of water, and unforgettable pain—and he had learned it well.)

The last of his classmates, Freckles, Iida and Gravity, came in just before the bell rang, and Aizawa-sensei ambled into the classroom on their heels with all the eagerness of a hungover salaryman.

It was time for second period to begin.

* * *

Shoto placed his last notebook inside his bag and zipped it closed. School had ended for the day, leaving him and his tired classmates to grouch (his classmates, that is) about aching muscles and slowly make their way out of the doors and into the relative freedom of their after school lives.

The sports festival and all he would need to do to prepare for it were occupying his thoughts (he had to re-write his training schedule, which would, unfortunately, necessitate having to actually speak to Endeavor about it-), when Shoto realized that today, unlike the previous weeks, was not going to be a day of him and his zombie-classmates shuffling out of the doors—on account of the massive crowds of people in front of it, as they all discovered once Explosions had slammed the doors open... and was nearly trampled.

"What the ever-loving _fuck_?" Shoto heard him mumble. He then tilted his chin upwards and sneered down at them. You had to give Explosions credit: where he fell short in basic human decency, he more than made up for in his creative use of facial expressions and bad, awful, no-good language.

"Get the fuck out of my way, Extras. If you've got the time to waste circle-jerking each other, be my _Endeavor_-damned guest_—_"

Quietly choking on thin-air, Shoto tucked his face into his elbow and coughed, incredulous amusement leaving his shoulders shaking. He barely heard Iida launch into a lecture about appropriate word-usage in a public setting.

He'd heard All Might's name used in vain plenty of times in his life (in his household in particular, in increasingly vulgar and creative ways as he grew older), as well as the names of a number of other heroes. All Might, Best Jeanist, Gang Orca, Hawks and Edgeshot ranked among the most popular names to misuse (i.e., 'I'd Gang his Orca', 'I don't give two-Hawks', 'All Fucking Might', 'Sweet Jeanist' and 'Holy Edgeshot'), at least among the students he had encountered during his short private-education experience, but not once had he _ever… _

_'Endeavor-damned'_.

Shoto dropped his arm as soon as he had composed himself, hoping his face wasn't as red as it felt. That was possibly the most wonderful thing he had heard in a very long time. If he thought he could get away with using it without landing himself in a world of trouble, he would unquestioningly use it at the next opportunity. He allowed himself one minute to imagine what Father's face would look like if he said it in his presence, reveled in the resulting image for a glorious five seconds, before reluctantly shooing the image away. Sadly, the cons did not outweigh the pros, and it was best to put the thought entirely out of his head to avoid any accidental insulting of the wrong person.

"I came here to declare war," someone said from the door. Shoto hefted his bag over his shoulder and tucked his chair in, determinedly not looking at the door. If he made eye contact, there was a chance someone would engage him, and then he would be forced to speak or potentially make even _more_ eye contact, and that was the last thing he needed right now. Not looking at the door also helped to keep the thought of, _H__ow am I going to get out without touching someone? _from turning into skin-crawling anxiety. The crowd had yet to disperse, something Shoto thought could be blamed entirely on Explosions, who had basically thrown a still-warm cow into the middle of a pride of salivating lions—well, no, actually; perhaps it was more like throwing a bag of feed into a chicken coop? A salad into a cage of docile rabbits? In any case, if Explosions didn't stop blocking the door with his terrible attitude and even worse mouth very soon, he was going to have to do something drastic.

A sheet of ice across the floor should do the trick. Shoto gauged the distance between his desk and the door, calculated in the number of 1-A students still in the room, recalculated to fit Explosions's ego, and nodded to himself. That would work.

Still, he would rather not get on Aizawa-sensei's bad side by using his quirk if he didn't have to, particularly not when Sensei was still injured, and his temper so much shorter than it already naturally was.

They had all had an unfortunate encounter with Sensei's shortened capacity for bullshit, just after lunch:

_"You having problems concentrating, Mineta?" Sensei asked the boy during History, the bandages covering most of his face doing nothing to detract from the incredibly weighted nature of the question. _

(Mineta_, Shoto mouthed to himself, confused, but then Sensei's incredible killing intent hit him, and the __thought was forgotten)_

_A white-faced Purple Balls slowly shook his head, but Sensei was already grinning darkly, his eyes glittering sinisterly between the slits of his bandages. Without anyone having actually moved, Purple Balls's desk suddenly seemed to be the only one in the room, as if all the tables around it had given into the terrible gravity of their oncoming doom and had shifted away from it, and him, in response. _

_Shoto himself wasn't immune to the sudden invisible exodus, and found himself slowly holding __up his textbook and hunching his shoulders to hide behind it. From the corner of his eye, Shoto saw Big Lips doing the same, only he was going so far as to actually slide down his chair, as if he intended to disappear under his table. _

_"Not to worry, Sensei has the perfect cure for you," Aizawa-sensei told Purple Balls, smiling malevolently down at his flinching student. "Take this—" he scribbled something down on a piece of paper, "—and give it to Recovery Girl. It explains how you've just been so tired lately, from all those all-nighters you've been pulling—" (there was a collective gasp, as everyone knew what Recovery Girl thought about _All Nighters _) "—and how you just keep forgetting to eat, so your stamina is also suffering. It also has a note from me—your thoughtful, kind-hearted teacher—that encourages her to give you the full work-up, in the off chance something else is wrong that your dear Sensei has failed to notice." _

_Sensei reached out his arm, paper fitted neatly between his index finger and middle finger, and smiled beatifically with all his teeth. Looking as if his soul had escaped his body, Purple Balls slowly got to his feet and wobbled over to Sensei, taking the note with trembling fingers and a woe-begotten expression. _

_"Sensei," he whimpered, "if I tell her that she'll…. She won't use her quirk if she thinks you haven't been taking care of yourself! I don't wanna shot! Or… or… probes, or whatever!" _

_"Then you should have thought of that before falling asleep in my class," came Sensei's heartless reply. "Remember that for next time. The rest of you as well! I won't tolerate any bullshit from you!" _

_"Yes, sir!" Came the immediate response out of 19 terrified mouths. _

_As Purple Balls dragged his feet out the door, Sensei's parting orders to 'not change the note, or _he would know_' ringing in their ears, Shoto resolved to step extra carefully around Sensei for the foreseeable future. _

They had all been… extra quiet, after that. Suffice it to say, Sensei's already small threshold for misbehavior from his students had fallen to nonexistent levels, and Shoto had no interest in aiming that level of temper at himself.

So only his quirk as a last resort—ah, Explosions was walking away. He'd made some statement beforehand, Shoto vaguely recalled hearing. Something about aiming for the top? Oddly, this statement was being treated by a few of his male classmates like it was a prophecy handed down by a renowned religious leader, and Shoto couldn't help looking at them askance for overreacting to such obvious knowledge. They were training to be pro-heroes, the absolute best of the best; if they weren't aiming for the top, then what in the world were they doing here in the first place?

In any case, Explosions was opening a path for him. Relieved, Shoto tracked the stomping boy with his eyes and in the process accidentally met the eyes of a tall, violet-haired boy. Looking away would be cowardly, now that they had made eye contact, but he had this particular game down pat:

He blinked once, as if surprised; flicked his eyes down, then slowly up; blinked again, slower, as if disappointed; then away, with a dull, disinterested look for emphasis. In his peripheral vision, he could see the boy bristling in irritation or anger, and grimly counted it as a success.

Now hopefully he would be able to get out without the boy confronting him (there was always a downside to these, what had Natsuo called them, 'dick-measuring contests'?) and Shoto could finally get home and start on planning his Sports Festival Win.

"ALL RIGHT, NOW THAT IS ENOUGH!" 1-A's reliable Class President shouted. Shoto immediately began weaving his way through the desks, positive he knew where this was going, and thankful for it. Iida was really quite a helpful individual when he was aiming his self-righteous shouting in someone else's ear.

"1-A students are now going home, I demand you all disperse before I call a member of the faculty!"

And so another day ended, and Shoto was able to duck his way out of the crowd with minimal contact and from there, to home. He had a win to plan_... _and a massive _Fuck You_ to somebody he hated to fit into it.


	7. The Porcelain God

Warning: graphic description of vomiting. Abuse and self-harm, though not explicit. Please mind the warnings and take care of yourself.

* * *

It was almost time for Homeroom, and they had one more week until the Sports Festival.

The teachers had all been working them hard. Foundational Hero Studies had swiftly turned into a class that everyone both dreaded and loved in turns, as they were constantly pushed to the very limit of their powers and endurance—pushed to find their limits, then go right on past them.

_Plus Ultra_, and all that.

Shoto himself was perfectly capable of keeping up with demanding training schedules on your average day; but with the way his training at home had also kicked up a notch, he found himself flagging nearly as much as his less-trained classmates, his energy easily spent by the end of the day.

Thankfully, they would have an easy day today. The afternoon had the usual Hero Studies scheduled, but the morning was only Modern Art History with Midnight-sensei, then a free study period, during which Shoto was seriously considering catching up on his sleep.

He was debating whether his grades could take the hit, or if he should use the time to fret and stress over his inability to beat Yaoyorozu in the class rankings... when he was forced back to reality by an unpleasant surprise.

"You know, Todoroki-kun, I am a very honest person, ribbit," said the empty chair next to him.

Shoto didn't flinch or even tense, because no matter how quietly you moved, his teacher in the art of maintaining situational awareness had been pain, pain, and more pain—one of the most effective teachers you could possibly ask for. But he had to hand it to whoever had managed breach his personal space without sending off any alarm bells till they were already in very close proximity, because that was not an easy thing to do, by any means.

He turned to see a student (long, straight green hair framing liquid dark eyes) staring up at him with the patient air of someone who had nowhere else they'd rather be. Shoto hated people who gave off that feeling, because they were incredibly hard to get rid of.

He didn't ask, _Who are you?_ Even though he wanted to. Manners and social graces had been hammered into him by the same teacher as the creator of his excellent situational awareness; Shoto's tongue had little control over the sting inherent in its movements, but he was fully capable of knowing when it was and wasn't appropriate to let it loose.

Speaking of tongues, this was the student with the long, prehensile tongue, wasn't it? The (Shoto discreetly flicked his eyes down to confirm, yes, a skirt) girl who had come in relatively high in the Apprehension Test, as they had all come to call it? A Heteromorphic Quirk, was it.

Shoto politely met her eyes, held the look for one, two seconds, then slid his eyes away dismissively.

"Yes? Was there something you needed?"

He could see her head tilt in an amphibious movement, likely studying him. "My name is Asui Tsuyu, and you can call me Tsu-chan. Like I said, I am a very honest person, and I like to say what I think."

She moved into his line of sight, apparently not noticing or ignoring the rigid, unfriendly lines of his body (not an unusual occurrence, but always a disappointing one). Reluctantly, he met her gaze; it seemed like he'd have to actually engage with this one.

"And?" he asked, cool and impatient, as if to say, 'would you get to the point?' without actually saying the words. A long pink tongue flicked out, big eyes blinking slowly, but otherwise, there was no reaction.

"And I think you have incredible control of your quirk, ribbit, so good as to almost be impossible for your age. Did you start your training very young?"

_("Wrong. Again!" _

_Shoto's lower lip wobbled, but he obediently slapped a hand onto the floor and pushed himself up. The paper-thin skin of his arms flashed with darkening red splotches and green-black-purple dots in a macabre pattern as he shifted his weight and stood. _

_"Ready," he called, his voice high and brittle, but still eager, still willing. His eagerness was met with a cold wall of immovability, and seconds later, tennis balls flew at him with unerring precision. _

_He dogged the flying missiles, trying his hardest to hit the few he could even see with his terrible control over his quirk, and felt a sinking feeling in his stomach with each stream of flame and ice that failed to connect. _

_Two balls hit, in succession, and Shoto lost his footing and tumbled to the ground. _

_"Not. Good. Enough! Again!") _

Shoto blinked away the memory. Things from his past had the most unfortunate habit of popping into his mind at random points throughout his day, without any obvious triggers. It was always unsettling, and incredibly aggravating.

Tsu-chan's eyes blinked up at him, still waiting patiently, and Shoto felt a spike of resentment at the social conditioning that made him feel compelled to respond to such unrelenting attention.

"...from a long time ago," he finally, reluctantly, admitted. "My family has been very... supportive, of my dreams to be a hero—"

_("You will be the one to defeat All Might, boy. You will build yourself up and break yourself down, over and over and over again, as many times as it takes to make you into the man you need to be, or so help me, I will be the one to do it, and if I have to do it, Shoto? I won't be so careful as to make sure you are intact at the end of it." __) _

"—so I have always been provided with whatever training I have needed or desired," he lied. The words tasted of fire and ashes, and blood mixed with tears.

Tsu-chan was nodding in front of him like this made a lot of sense. "Would this be because you are the son of the Number Two Hero, Endeavor?"

His heartbeat picked up in his chest. Shoto brought suddenly shaking fingers up to press against the skin and bone hiding the rapid _thump-thump-thump_, trying to fight his instinctive reaction to toss his entire desk forwards and into her inquisitive, tremendously rude face. Maybe then she, and the few other people he could sense listening in, would forget about this entire conversation and that he had ever been mentioned within the same breath as _Endeavor_.

Some of this must have appeared in his face against his will, because Tsu-chan nodded at him as if something she'd been wondering had just been confirmed, and quickly backpedaled.

"I apologize, Todoroki-kun. If I had known you wished to keep it a secret, I would have been more discreet."

Thump-thump-thump went his heart, pumping blood up through his veins and throughout his body, tirelessly carrying oxygen so his brain could continue to function; without oxygen, Shoto would die and turn into little particles of dust, to be remembered only for his relation to a hero unworthy of his title. He reminded himself of these things as he dropped his hand and dug deeply into the recently healed burn scar on his stomach, relishing the pain as it successfully shocked him out of his spiraling panic.

"Don't worry about it," he said, through a clenched jaw that hated the movement and fought against it; he pressed harder, and produced something like a smile. If the way the heat signatures around him leaned back slightly was any indication, he hadn't managed it as well as he'd thought.

"It's not like it's a secret. Anyone could have found out from a simple internet search. I don't care—"

Lie, lie, lie.

"—who knows."

"That's really awesome though!" Someone burst out—ah, Tails, the one with a prehensile tail and a proficiency with martial arts.

Catching Shoto's eye, the boy in question flushed and rubbed at his head in embarrassment. "I'm sorry, I couldn't help overhearing… it's just that I'm a huge fan? I mean, Edgeshot is my favorite, but I can totally appreciate Endeavor!"

"I feel the same," Crow Head piped up. He inclined his head at Shoto, clacking his beak once as a sort of emphasis. "Endeavor's capture rate is astounding. If I am not incorrect, I believe it has been at 100% for the past three years running? His position as the Number Two Hero is certainly well earned."

Suddenly, everyone was talking at once, expounding on their love of the Second Strongest Hero.

"There was this thing I saw on tv this one time—"

"—And the villain flew back over 100 meters!"

"—Control of flames, naturally; still, Best Jeanist has many commendable traits—"

"I like his costume! He's a real sense of style, you know? And that fire beard, like, sorry Todoroki, but _wow-" _

"Of course, in comparison to, say, Gang Orca—"

His ears were ringing.

Shoto touched one hand to his left ear absently, his eyes darting left, then right, as the conversation caught on to more people and spread like a viciously contagious virus.

The ringing grew with the ebb and swell of the chorus, and he became aware that his breathing had fallen into the deliberate pattern he had learned to adopt when his lungs became tight and the world started to turn on its axis.

The bell rang, and the voices mercifully paused. This gave Shoto the second he needed to become aware that he would not make it through the next lesson intact if this continued.

As a yellow caterpillar inched its reluctant way through the door, Shoto scraped his chair back (not quite aware enough to notice the slight fall in volume at his sudden movement) and rose to his feet.

"I… bathroom," he managed to grit out, sounding only a little strangled to his own ears, before speed-walking to the door as fast as he could while maintaining his even breathing. He heard someone call out as he reached the door, a confused: "Wait, what just—" before the door slammed shut behind him, and he was running.

The new few seconds-minutes-hours blurred together into a confusing, endless moment of shapeless color and sound. He might have run into someone, even, at some indecipherable point in his mindless run; he couldn't be sure, as he had only the vaguest impression of purple, gravity-defying hair and a sharp pain in his side. But when his world finally snapped back into alignment, his head was inches away from cold porcelain as he vomited his breakfast, then red-tinged stomach acid, and everything else was swiftly forgotten.

When his heaving had mostly subsided, Shoto spat one last time, fumbled for the toilet roll, and tore off a handful to scrub over his face. Then he collapsed against the wall like a puppet with its strings cut and slid slowly to the ground.

_Endeavor. Endeavor. Endeavor._

It had sounded like a chant, or a prayer: a multitude of voices, all coming together as one to intone the chant to summon their god: the Number Two Hero.

All Might was a god in his own right, but his followers with their adulation and cries of gratitude had never grated in quite the same way as today's rousing chorus.

_Endeavor_. Even thinking the word sent spikes of nausea streaking through his chest, the image that sprang to his mind like a pavlovian response inciting rage, bitterness, resentment—an outpouring of emotion that swelled and swelled till he couldn't contain or repress it, and the emotions overflowed from his body in the form of an unstoppable physical response.

Shoto lunged for the toilet bowl and vomited again, though this time all he gained for his troubles was a spasming throat and streaming eyes.

_Endeavor, Endeavor, Endeavor. _

Would that be him, someday? Would he stand on a pedestal, tall and proud and secure in his superiority, while his worshippers prostrated themselves before his feet and proclaimed him fantastic and magnificent? Would becoming that great god, believed to be untouchable, invulnerable, unattainable—would that turn him into the sort of hero who, to maintain his position of power, would give no thought to the bodies he left behind in his wake?

Just the thought that he might one day become that sort of person, that he might someday hurt the people he cared about—

Shoto pressed a hand to his mouth and muffled a scream.

"…Uh, hello? An-anyone in here?"

The hand he'd used to cover his mouth was on the verge of slipping when the voice froze it in midair. Quickly, Shoto pressed hard against his mouth to muffle any unintentional noise, his breathing patterns turning to short, shallow puffs as he slowly, carefully, pulled himself to his feet.

"Hey, uh, if um, there's anyone in here, I was… that is, Aizawa-sensei sent me to find Todoroki-kun and see what was wrong with him, and… a gen-Ed student, named, uh, Shinso? Said he saw him passing here. So If you've seen him or heard from him… I was, um. Going to tell Aizawa-sensei that he went to the nurse? Because um, if I were Todoroki-kun and I wasn't feeling well, I wu-would um, do that. I'll just-I'll just go now, to-to check a few other places? So. If there's no one, then don't worry about it, but if, um. Anyway. Bye?"

The sound of shuffling footsteps began to move in the direction of the door, and a second later, it swung closed with a quiet whoosh of air.

It wasn't until the faint sounds of someone walking had faded away completely that Shoto risked folding out of the unintentional fighting stance he had fallen into. He paused for a short minute before doing anything else, and just concentrated on getting his thoughts together as his pounding heart began to subside.

That had been… Freckles, the very-short-lived Class Representative? The one with the Quirk that had a lot of power and was strangely similar to All Might's, except in the way it had a tendency to shatter his limbs when he utilized it.

What an odd encounter. Shoto didn't know Freckles well enough (beyond their shared trauma from the USJ near-death experiences) to understand where that strange conversational idea had sprung from, or even what the boy had intended with it, but the boy had managed to get through to him that he now had a whole free period with a ready-made excuse. For that alone, Shoto supposed he would have to thank Freckles, when he could bring himself to go back to the classroom.

_(You could thank him by remembering his name, _something whispered quietly in his head. Shoto flicked the thought away like one would flick away a fly and paid it no mind.)

He slid the lock, and pushed the stall door open with a quiet creak.

…Granted, if he actually wanted that excuse to slide, he would now have to actually _go _to Recovery Girl's office, wouldn't he.

The adrenaline rush had taken care of the last of his nausea, though thinking about it threatened to bring it all back up again, so Shoto pushed the memory firmly aside and went to splash his face.

Other than a few vague mental notes in the back of his mind (including an incident of very familiar bullying and abuse that he was very deliberately _not thinking about_) and the events at USJ, Freckles hadn't really registered as anyone worth… noticing, as terrible as that sounded in hindsight. The strange backlash of his quirk and relationship with All Might, in all its confusing mystery, were worth noting, yes, but they hadn't been enough to keep the boy in his thoughts…

Shoto looked up into the mirror, that thought running through his head, and reared back in unavoidable shock.

He wasn't one to look into mirrors, for reasons he didn't mentally want to touch on, and now he was deeply regretting it.

His face had the gaunt, sallow look of someone who had not been sleeping regularly—which was true, but not something he had been keeping track of, as naming one night in recent memory when he _had _slept a full night's sleep was a nearly impossible task. Beneath his eyes (he traced rough, patchy skin around a sky-blue eye and fought a shudder), the black-blue coloring beneath translucent skin seemed a shade darker than the last time he had cared to notice.

He dragged his fingertips down his face from under his eyes, watching the skin pull and stretch. How long had he been like this? Was it very obvious? Shoto pulled a little harder, then let go, and watched the skin take a fraction of a second to shift back into place. Dehydrated, huh. Great.

Shoto leaned his hands against the edge of the porcelain, wishing, for a moment, that he could follow the running water down the drain and into the sewers, where he could wallow in the filth he could feel running underneath his skin.

Then he shook his head and slapped his face a few times, hoping to put some color into them (it didn't work) and some sense into everything else. Then he straightened his back, exhaled, and set about sticking the pieces of himself back together.

The person that stared back at him in the mirror a few minutes later was barely recognizable, but it would hold up under scrutiny well enough. He only had to survive long enough to tear his way through his training regime this evening, and then he could collapse under all the things he was failing to carry.

_Enough_, he told himself coldly. _Enough_. Then he spun on his heel and headed back to the infirmary to lie his way through an examination long enough to snag a hall pass.


	8. Black Flies

Warning: child abuse, implied spousal abuse and vomiting.

* * *

It had been a long week.

The thought floated through Shoto's mind as his car pulled to a stop before a red light, and the driver flicked on his left indicator and tapped against the wheel impatiently. It hadn't felt like a four day week, with the way his mind was constantly on the Sports Festival: on what he would need to accomplish to win; how far he needed to push himself; how many hours of trivial daily life (things such as food, sleep, social interaction and entertainment) that he could chisel off his schedule in order to have more time to train; how many hours of Father's intense scrutiny and suffocating control he could stomach before he gave in to the urge to scream—

Anyway, the week had been a long one, and even knowing that the next would be just as long (even with the addition of a national holiday on Monday, a holiday in honor of Empress Michimoto), Shoto was feeling slightly optimistic about his progress. His stamina was slowly building by the day, he was maintaining his body's fat-to-muscle ration in accordance with Father's wishes (thus sparing himself a tedious lecture), and his control over his right-side was reaching pin-point accuracy.

It had been a long week, but a good one overall. Shoto idly took in the familiar houses near his own as the front gates to the Todoroki household opened, and hoped that the next would prove to be just as successful.

The car Father usually took was absent in the driveway when Shoto's own car pulled in through the gates, which wasn't too unusual, given the time of day. Fuyumi would be absent as well, as she had been thoughtful enough to message him earlier in the day about covering a shift for a coworker. Shoto stepped out of the car and made his way over the stone path leading to the front entrance, wondering if Father's chauffeur was on holiday, if he'd taken the _shinkansen_ to work or if he was simply trying to lull Shoto into a false sense of security. Saito-san was on her way out the door when he pushed it open, her work ending early on Fridays, and she bowed shallowly to him as he stepped inside.

Dinner would be on the low, carved wooden table (created from a single, 800-year-old tree, and with an eight-figure price tag to match) in the Chrysanthemum room where they partook a majority of their meals. Shoto lined his shoes neatly in front of the gap between the wooden flooring of the front entrance and the tiled _genkan, _an image of the room floating to the front of his mind:

The Chrysanthemum room was a large, 10-mat room, with the wall facing the outdoor garden covered in floor-to-ceiling _yukimishoji_: the delicate paper doors made specifically to be able to slide the bottom half upwards, allowing for a view of the snow in winter. They functioned as curtains, with thick glass doors on the outside to keep the elements out.

The ten _tatami_-mats were forever green and smelling of freshly-mowed grass (due to a careful schedule for changing them out on a monthly basis without disturbing any of the occupants of the house, something Shoto had happened to come upon after going out for his morning run ahead of schedule). The room had gained its name—the _Chrysanthemum _room—due to the _fuchi_ (the cloth covering the edges of the tatami mats) on the _tatami_, which came in dove gray and had delicate white blossoms dotted throughout its complicated pattern of ever-green colored vines.

Two large Chinese characters (制御), together forming the word for 'control', had been written in a brisk, masculine hand on a beautifully patterned scroll, and it hung in a place of honor above the fragile flower arrangement artistically placed upon the recessed space of the _toko_, made of smooth, shining oak.

Shoto had stepped into this room (the one with the nearly-invisible stain on the floor cushion, from a cup of tea thrown in anger, that the cleaners had yet to notice) every day for as long as he could remember; and for as long as he could remember, he had made it a habit to come in from the _Peony _room (which was farthest from the kitchen, and closest to the stairs) and out through the wide, smooth balcony, in order to crouch down at the start of the long line of glass doors leading into the Chrysanthemum room. One of the _yukimishoji_ doors would jam if not jimmied in the proper way, and before leaving any meal, he (and Mom, in the beginning, which later changed to Fuyumi) would ensure that the window stayed open that crack, even if it meant waiting to leave last after a meal, or finding some excuse to be near the window. This enabled them to take a quick look into the room the following day, giving them some forewarning of what they would be walking into, or—as Shoto had been allowed in his later years, if he was careful to stagger the days and give a good enough excuse—to skip the meal, depending on how bad Father's mood appeared to be.

Today, Shoto nodded to Saito-san, kicked off his shoes, ran up the stairs (quietly, quietly) to dump his things in his room, ran back down, and went about the familiar song and dance until he was crouched in front of the thin space between the floor and the wooden frame.

Empty. He straightened, expelling an unintentional breath of relief, and slid open the glass sliding door. Sneaking around like this became exponentially more difficult in winter, and some days Shoto would simply skip eating altogether rather than risk getting caught and having to be in the same room as the near-visible cloud of bad temper Father could carry around with him on the bad days.

Today was not one of those days, and Shoto gave a disinterested glance down at the food laid out with meticulous taste (_jiru—_made from _buri, _from the smell—_takikomi-gohan,_ fried croquet, stewed root-vegetables and an assortment of pickles), and reluctantly dropped down onto a cushion and began eating.

Shoto enjoyed being alone. One of the only downsides, which was always on his mind as he ate quickly and with little regard for manners, was knowing that being alone was never something that could last.

But today, Shoto was in luck.

Though he ate as fast as he dared, there was no other sign of life in the house by the time he had muttered a quiet, "_Gochisousama,_" and placed his chopsticks on their holder. Beginning to feel hopeful that Endeavor was on one of his patrols that would go late into the night, Shoto strolled out of the room (through the main sliding door with its green, hand-painted pines and sprawling mountains in watery-green and black ink), homework and thoughts of his training regime already running through his head, and only a vaguely-apologetic thought for Fuyumi, who would no doubt the left to clean up the dishes.

Rigid self-discipline was in his nature (or had, at least, been hammered into him deeply enough to pass as natural) so whether his Father or Endeavor were breathing down his neck or not, Shoto was perfectly capable of following the routine that sometimes felt as if it were engraved into his skeleton.

Homework (English, studying for tomorrow's quiz in Modern Art History, reading ahead in his math workbook) he completed within good time, and by the time he resurfaced, it was barely going on 7PM. Dinner had been eaten quickly and, in hindsight, too early, so Shoto got to his feet and stretched, thinking to get in his training hours already, in the off chance Endeavor would return home early and feel in the mood for a spar. Warming up had never helped, but looking exhausted sometimes encouraged Endeavor to give way to Father, who at least had some consideration for the fact that Shoto had this thing called _School _and this other thing called _Appearances _that must be religiously maintained.

He walked down the stairs and towards the dojo. On a whim, he decided to walk there using the balconies and around through the garden. Slipping into the wooden clogs lined up at convenient places for this very purpose, Shoto stepped through the smooth white stones lining the gray-stone path and forwards, under the long line of trees.

Looking at all the greenery made Shoto miss autumn with all its majestic glory. Shoto enjoyed the effervescent nature of fall, the way short-lived things could be made all the more beautiful for the way they were not meant to last.

(He loved fall and its short-lived glory, and at the same time, he hated and dreaded it with all of his being, because he had learned to fear fragile and short-lived things (people) just as he had learned to fear _for_ them. But some things were to be repressed for the very sake of survival, and this was one pattern of thought Shoto put an incredible amount of time into packing away into the dark.)

He ran absent fingers over young Japanese maple trees as he passed them, waved to Blue, the red and white koi fish, and All Right, the gold koi fish in the pond—

_("We'll name this one Blue, and this one All Right," Mom whispered, holding his waist tightly so he could lean forward to take a look. _

_"Whyzzat?" he whispered back, too loud in the way of all children everywhere. _

_He was too enraptured by this new exciting development to notice the way Mom kept glancing over her shoulder, or the way her shushes were threaded through with a bit more urgently than normal. _

_"Because this one is _red_ and _white_, so all it's missing is blue. And this one is gold, and gold is a lucky color so… so gold is _All Right_, because… Because Mommy needs to believe that everything will be All Right, and because gold is a lucky color, so if I wish on it maybe... maybe it will come true." _

_Mom patted his head with a delicate, trembling touch when he tilted his head at her, still confused. Shoto's eyes began sparkling, then, as his mind made a sudden connection. "Izzat like All Mi—"_

_A hand pressed suddenly against his mouth, a hand that trembled even as it pressed hummingbird light. Shoto blinked at Mom, surprised and a little scared._

_"You can't say that honey," she whispered, a sharp note of something in her voice Shoto was too young to recognize as fear. "You can't say that name, okay? It's just... I know you love All Might, but that's not the fishy's name! And..."_

_She dropped her hand, but solemn now from sensing the change in mood, Shoto only looked up at her quietly with large eyes and kept his lips zipped shut. _

_"You'll understand when you're older," she said, eyes dark and liquid in the warm glow of the electric lamps. The bruising along the edge of her jaw was well covered enough to not be obvious at first glance, and when she smiled, it was more than enough to hide the damage and the sadness in her eyes from Shoto, who only saw his mom, happy and smiling at him. _

_She pushed back flowing strands of powder-white hair and squeezed his small hand with her own. _

_Her dark gray eyes shutting against whatever she was holding back, Mom murmured: "And this should stay between us. It'll be our little secret, okay, darling? Just our little secret.")_

The memory had been long buried and entirely forgotten.

Shoto's stared blankly at the small decorative pond, mind gone white with static. The hand raised to wave at the fish faltered, and dropped back to his side, limp.

_Blue_. _All Right_. How had he never seen the connection before?

The details of the scene became clearer, as the memory slowly crystallized in his mind's eye: after dark, no snow on the ground, but Shoto recalled seeing stars, now, crystal clear in that way only winter could manage in an area so close to the city. They must have been sneaking around, trying to avoid disturbing Father, who had very strict rules about sleeping schedules and bedtimes, even then. But, no—Shoto's short-lived obsession with All Might had been still going strong then, so he couldn't have been older than four or five. Mother had looked as young and as tired as she always had, back then, so all Shoto had to go on was the way his grammar and syntax hadn't been anywhere near up to par. She had most likely been hiding bruises, even then.

Shoto strained to remember, but he had been young; the knowledge wouldn't come. Endeavor had probably still been hiding the abuse; it hadn't seriously started until about a year after Shoto's Quirk came in. Until then, Endeavor hadn't done more than give Shoto bruising and strained muscles in the name of training, so Mom hadn't felt the need to step in.

His feet wanted to stay there, in the spot between the two white-speckled decorative stones—the ones with the perfectly smoothed tops, just right for sitting and staring at the _sōzu, _and waiting eagerly for its _shishi-odoshi_.

_S_hoto wavered, but in the end, with a _clack-clack-clack_ of wood on stone, he moved on.

If he stopped to consider every memory that came welling to the surface in this house, he would never get anything done. Father could be home any second, Endeavor quickly roaring to the surface to bring about whatever new kind of hell he had managed to think up.

Sliding his hand over the railing absently, Shoto took one deliberate, solemn step after another. Taking a jump-and-slide over the smooth wood of the balconies no longer seemed appealing, in light of the new pictures crowding his mind. He walked over varnished wood, meticulously maintained, and around to the back of the sprawling estate, where Father had had the dojo built.

There had been mirrors lining one wall and thick padding on the floors (not the typical _tatami_, or the bill for changing out the singed mats on a daily basis would quickly cost more than the family's yearly budget) when Shoto first started using the dojo. When Father had stopped trying to be gentle and started bringing Endeavor into play, the damage to the room had escalated by the day. Soon, there wasn't a day that went by where they weren't shattering a mirror or starting a fire that would quickly spread. Endeavor had tried to pass it off as extra training, claiming that Shoto would have to learn to avoid collateral damage eventually, so it was good practice. The fire he had used he urged Shoto to absorb with his left side, or put it out with his right.

Shoto, still young and with almost zero control of his quirk, had tried and mostly failed.

In the end, after a month of continued damage and one nearly-catastrophic accident involving glass shards from a broken mirror and Shoto being thrown into them, Endeavor had given up and called for the room to be reformed.

Now the dojo had a slightly-absorbent material for its flooring, with cold-resistant and flame-retardant walls. The windows were high up in the ceiling and had no glass, only bars—cold had no effect on the members of the Todoroki household, though some less than others, and the risk of the glass shattering from the extreme temperature changes was too high. Shoto and his father were the only ones to use the dojo on a regular basis, and as the room was on the north side of the premises, there wasn't much direct sunlight. In the height of summer, when even being in shadow didn't do much to take away the suffocating humidity, Father would reluctantly allow Shoto to practice primarily with his right side.

(What Father had only belatedly realized, about two or three years ago, was that Shoto had no intention of training with his left side ever again, regardless of Father's opinion. This had, understandably, not gone over well.)

Shoto opened the reinforced door (titanium alloy blend, capable of withstanding extreme levels of heat) with the key in his pocket. Father had given it to him the first time he was 'allowed' into the dojo, telling him that it was 'for him alone', and 'not to be given to his siblings, under any circumstances'. Because he was special—because he was the child Endeavor had chosen to be his legacy.

_What_ an honor.

Shoto shrugged off the thought, unwilling to let his mood be soured when he had this rare chance to train alone. The dojo had a small changing room off to the side, and he went in and changed into his _gi_.

His bare feet slap-slap-slapped against the floor as he walked, the sound bouncing slightly against the walls. He folded himself into lotus position on the floor in the middle of the room, wanting to let the quiet of the room settle his thoughts and get him into the right mindset. After a few minutes of quiet meditating, Shoto began his warm-up stretches.

On the far-left side of the large, auditorium-sized room, a series of work-out machines and free weights lined the walls. Shoto's daily training regime whether Endeavor was involved or not consisted of going through his _kata_, doing weight training, and running seven to ten kilometers a day on the treadmill or at the near-by running path that ran along the river (it went without saying that on the days where the injuries stood out like streaks of dark paint on a blank canvas, Shoto was forced to stick to the treadmill and forbidden from leaving the house at all. Given the choice, Shoto would always choose to leave the constricting house with all of its ghosts, even if that meant having a silent shadow, or sometimes even a car, intruding on his solitude.)

He swung his right arm out and to the side, fingers rigidly straightened like a blade, muscles tensed and aim true: if there had been a person before him, their trachea would have collapsed inwards and shattered under the hard side of his hand. Then he stepped back and exhaled, long and deeply. Sweat had lightly beaded across his face and neck during his training, and he walked over to one of the training benches to grab his towel and water bottle.

Shoto drank deeply, content with the warmth seeping from his skin and the feel of activated muscles; when finished, he placed the water bottle down again and looked at the machines contemplatively.

Yesterday had been cardio-intensive, with a new yoga routine he had been attempting that focused on flexibility, abs, and glutes. Today's routine was supposed to be upper-body strengthening with a focus on delts and traps, but…

Biting his lip, Shoto flicked his eyes to the door. Nobody was home; there wasn't anyone to tell on him, or even tell him what to do. No one would know if he decided to just… not work out. Just this once.

Shoto would know, but _he_ wouldn't, and so long as he was careful…

Mind made up, and with only a slightly guilty conscience, Shoto flipped the towel over his shoulder and headed to the showers.

Just this once, just today, he would allow himself this. He would make up the difference tomorrow.

* * *

Stepping out of the shower and marveling at how different it felt not to be in some kind of pain, Shoto headed back to the main complex of the house, feeling surprisingly cheerful.

There was a small, separate housing complex on the grounds that housed the security personal. The Todoroki family outsourced their cleaning staff, and they tended to rotate companies every month for security purposes. There were cameras dotted throughout the grounds and about the outside of the house, so simply climbing over the wall to get out of the house was, while not impossible, quite difficult (a memory, an old, unpleasant one, tried to force its way into the front of his thoughts, but Shoto shoved it back down, unwilling to be distracted by unimportant, long-forgotten events). Shoto briefly considered trying anyway as he walked across the balconies, but in the end, shook the thought from his mind. It wasn't worth the hassle. He didn't feel any particular need to go out at the moment, anyway. Perhaps he would go to the Hydrangea room and watch some television. He had one in his room, but it was smaller than the one in the entertainment room, and Shoto felt the sudden urge to see what it was like without the constant pressure of his Father's presence. (There was nothing quite like being forced to watch a movie with someone you hated to make whatever you were watching awful.)

While passing the Wisteria room, Shoto paused. There had been a sound, almost like the car-wheels on gravel—but the sound of a group of _bosozoku_ (motorcycle gangs that took unfortunate pleasure in disturbing the peace by removing the mufflers on their exhaust pipes and letting rip the intrusive roar of their revving engines) passing the house quickly overtook whatever sound had caught Shoto's attention, and he leaned physically away from the noise, disgusted, and forgot about anything else. Being near the Wisteria room—which was next to the Peony room and across the hall from the kitchen—made him remember that Fuyumi had bought muscat grapes yesterday, and feeling suddenly peckish, Shoto opened the windows to the Wisteria room instead.

* * *

The kitchen was spotless, as it always was.

Shoto's eyes slide carefully over the empty spot where an old-style kettle had once sat and headed directly to the fridge without taking in anything else. He flicked on the electric kettle with one hand as he dug around the fridge, vaguely considering the pros and cons of drinking something caffeinated this late in the evening. The highly-concentrated levels of caffeine in coffee meant that it stayed in your blood for something like six hours whether you wanted it to or not, and a quick look at the clock told Shoto that if he wanted to sleep before midnight, he'd better not go for that.

What about green tea? Shoto finally spotted the grapes, hidden behind a container of miso, and pulled it out to wash.

They had an excellent selection of green tea, which Shoto honestly preferred to coffee, most days. There was also a great plum-flavored tea that was Fuyumi's favorite, though Shoto, as he was running a finger over carefully organized rows of tea bags and containers, had the sudden thought that he'd like a cup of herbal tea, maybe something like camomile?

It was as he was pouring water into his cup, delicate white-and-yellow flowers floating on the surface of the water, that the kitchen door slammed open with a bang.

Hand jerking in surprise, Shoto let out a loud gasp of surprise as the hot water went flying, landing on his exposed arms and partially on his leg. The cup and kettle both dropped from his suddenly numb hands as Shoto stared.

He hadn't bothered to turn on the light, choosing to move to the fridge from memory. The fridge light and the hallway light had been enough light to see by; Shoto was suddenly regretting that decision.

The terrifying apparition that was silhouetted in the light of the hallway seemed larger than life and twice as frightening. Father ducked under the door frame—slowly, so slowly—and moved his large figure towards where Shoto stood, arms and leg throbbing in time with the beat of a heart that had jumped into his throat.

In the next instant, his head went flying to the side, and Shoto fell to the ground, stunned, the entire right side of his face throbbing.

Father had hit him.

"What'er you doing here," a low voice, slightly slurred, breathed at him. Father leaned down, putting their faces nearly together, and Shoto could smell the overpowering scent of alcohol on his breath. "What're you doin', hiding about like… like a thief, boy. What're you… you outta be, training, gettin'… gettin' stronger. You slackin' off, huh?"

Father had hit him. _Father_ had… hit him.

His heart-beat throbbed in the place of contact as well as on the places where hot water had made contact, pain and disbelief merging together to create sickening nausea. His stomach lurched, and Shoto brought a trembling hand up to his mouth, unable to look away.

Fire burst to life along Father's chin and under his eyes, illuminating glowing blue eyes, the whites shot through with the red streaks of broken capillaries, and Shoto flinched back, unable to help himself, or the rise of fear.

"Your jus' like her," he said, and something in Shoto's chest attempted to gnaw its way down to his gut. "Week an' too soft to… you ain't got the balls to… you ain't got what it takes. Why do you have to… look like her. Soft, pretty. Useless. Jus' like her, you look jus' like her."

_("He looks more and more like him every day… some days, his left side… I can't bear to look at it, and I can't… Mother, please, I can't take it anymore. I don't think I can continue to raise him. I don't think… I don't think I should be allowed to."_

_"…Mom?")_

The image before his eyes—Fire billowing, Father looming, the pain in his arms and face and leg—merged with the image clawing its way to the front of his mind (Mom, on the phone, the fear in her face changing to disgusted horror, then pain, pain, and more pain).

It was too much. Over the sound of Father's rumbling voice, Shoto bent in half and threw up.

Mostly-digested food splattered across the wooden-paneling, and Shoto distantly heard Father curse. He heaved again, and again. There was the sound of someone stumbling away. A chair clattered, then fell to the ground with a dull clack.

"You're… disgustin'. Clean yourself up and get to the dojo, we've… we gotta…"

What they had to do, Shoto never found, as Father chose that moment to stumble out of the door. The sound of his heavy footsteps stomping their way towards the second floor broke through the piercing waves of pain radiating throughout his body.

Shoto, unmindful of the mess, flopped down onto his side and covered his face with both hands. Hysteria pressed fingers deeply into his eye sockets while panic took a tight grip on his lungs, and even the world behind his eyelids had begun to spin. His stomach ached, disgruntled at being empty, and his arms and legs stung with any physical contact. The right side of his face wanted to flinch away from any contact as well, but Shoto pressed all the harder, desperately trying to keep himself together, as if he could physically hold back all the little pieces that wanted to break away.

He failed, eventually, and the world blurred, all of the pieces that made him Todoroki Shoto floating away.

(Hours later, Fuyumi would come home after a dinner with friends to find him on the kitchen floor, and call security. He would spend the rest of the three-day weekend bedridden, unwilling and unable to leave his room, all the parts of himself still stuck in a distant, empty place. Later, Fuyumi would tell him that Father had spent most of the weekend checking on him, and wondered at the sign of concern; Shoto would turn his back to her, the little bits of himself that had managed to float back down to Earth wondering, too, and hating himself for it.)


	9. The Longer I Run

Time blurred, and before Shoto knew it, it was the day of the Sports Festival and he was standing alongside the entirety of the first year classes, waiting at the starting line for the first event to start.

The first event would be a race.

Shoto stretched out his right arm and rotated the shoulder, his face set in sharp lines. He tapped his booted feet against the ground, testing their traction.

Robots, huh. Original.

They had used robots in the entrance exam, Shoto had heard from his classmates; that they would use it again was slightly disappointing. It would have been nice if they'd tried a little harder to come up with something different (honestly, it wasn't like they couldn't afford it), but there was no help for it.

"I hope you're watching, shitty bastard," he murmured aloud, as Present Mic shouted down the numbers from five. He pulled his leg behind him for support, and drew his arm back as the numbers counted down from 3, 2, 1.

_Fwoom._

Two oncoming robots, each easily five meters tall, stalled and came to a stilted halt as a massive column of ice enveloped each, encasing them entirely in ice.

Shoto stopped for a moment to consider the students behind him, frozen but not from shock, before internally shrugging and moving onwards. He did call behind him the warning about instability, but otherwise didn't give them any thought as he forged ahead. Someone's vaguely familiar voice shouted recriminations behind him, but Shoto was moving forward and had no intentions of falling back for the sake of placating someone's delicate feelings.

This was war: Shoto had a goal to accomplish and something he desperately wanted to prove, and if they wanted fairness, they should have put in the effort necessary to meet him at the top.

He ran, throwing out ice with his right arm and stomping his power into the ground as robots moved towards him. He made good time without running into any obstacles or other players, and soon reached the second stage of the race—which was crossing a massive canyon, apparently, laced throughout with ropes of various lengths and sizes.

He stopped for a moment at the foot of the canyon, comparing the merit of few ideas, before deciding to go with the quickest option with the greatest possibility of success.

His right foot touched down on the closest rope and froze it, the ice eating up meters of rope by the second. Shoto looked over his shoulder once, and smirked. Then he turned back, took a deep breath to push down his unavoidable nerves, and jumped.

The boots proved to be worth the incredible price tag. The rubber soles gave Shoto the traction he needed to stay on the rope as he constantly produced more ice with his right foot, giving him the continued momentum necessary to push himself forwards. It took considerable balance to keep from falling off the rope, and the thrill of the danger may have had his stomach constantly leaping in his throat, but it did nothing to stop the half-terrified grin that refused to stay off his face.

He continued through the canyon this way, sliding and pushing, and reached the end a few minutes later with only two heart-stopping incidents of near-slippage. Shoto didn't give himself more than a second or two to get his breath back before he pushed himself up the red stairs to the last stage at a run.

He ran the short distance to the next obstacle, and when he had reached the start he came to an abrupt halt, and stared. He could hear Present Mic's distant voice howling something about mines (and the large sign that cheerfully proclaimed, "MINEFIELD AHEAD!"), and he could see the distinct markings of disturbed dirt on the ground. He hesitated, but in the end, there was nothing for it but to move onward.

He picked his way as quickly as he could through the minefield, aware of the crowd getting closer from the sudden increase in explosions of pink. The blast from each mine that was set off wasn't particularly strong; just loud, and awfully bright and colorful. Shoto was just glad it hadn't occurred to anyone to booby-trap the mines with something like glitter, for example, which would have been unspeakably awful.

It was smart, the way they had set up the field to be particularly difficult for those in the lead, as they would have to pay extra attention to the mild-discoloration in the dirt, while at the same time keeping up a fast pace in order to stay ahead. No doubt they had thought it up as a way to bring about some balance—

His instincts screamed at him.

Shoto looked sharply behind him as an explosion—one of a number which, in hindsight, he had been hearing come up behind him—brought a body with spiky-blond hair hurtling in his direction.

Feet never touching the ground, Explosions used the force of his quirk to bring him within touching distance of Shoto's right side, snarling at him about how he had chosen the wrong opponent to declare war on.

Shoto heard him, but possibilities and counter-moves were already shooting through a mind sharpened with adrenaline, and the words were mostly lost to the wind.

He brought his left arm up to guard even as he leapt back—and just in time, too, as Explosions's left hand blew a heated gust of compressed air at Shoto's left side, attempting to get under his guard.

Next, Explosions's left hand, bright with the force of his building quirk, came flying at Shoto's right-side. He slid a hand along said-arm and pushed it away, countering with a sharp grab to Explosions's right arm, and upon contact, pushed quickly-growing ice along the limb. The boy shook off Shoto's hand a moment later, and on some unspoken signal, they raised the tempo of their fierce dance.

Despite the escalation, neither was able to really let themselves go, so long as the mines were beneath their feet. They dodged and punched and kicked at each other, but each time their feet touched the ground, they were careful to ensure that they did so only on dark, undisturbed ground.

It was then that something incredible happened.

As Shoto went to dodge a brightly glowing foot, an even brighter light, accompanied by a massive wave of sound, erupted behind him. He swung his head, eyes widening in shock, as a gigantic pink cloud enveloped a good half of the minefield. He was aware that at his side, Explosions had stopped to look too, and their heads moved up in unison as a small part of the pink cloud shot forward, and faded away to reveal—

_"Ladies and gentlemen, was it on purpose, or an accident? Class A's Midoriya is in hot pursuit with that clever move!"_

In an instant, he was over their heads.

Explosions didn't miss a beat. He threw himself into the air with a quick succession of blasts, and was soon shooting forward himself. Not to be outdone, Shoto pressed his foot into the ground and released the cold half of his quirk. It would leave a path behind him for the others, but it couldn't be helped: Shoto didn't have the luxury to be thinking about the people he was leaving behind.

As he ran parallel to Explosions, they drew closer and closer to the swiftly slowly Freckles, as the momentum from his explosive idea wore off. He would fall short of reaching the goal, Shoto predicted, and found the thought to be surprisingly disappointing.

For a split second, as he and Explosions passed the point where Freckles was dropping and they all fell into a row, Shoto felt the world freeze, as if trying to capture a moment that would go down in history.

Out of the corner of his eye, Shoto saw something, human-shaped and clinging desperately to the top of a large board, fall, ever so slowly, in that frozen moment. Then, the world went pink.

The explosions didn't hurt, but they did momentarily blind him, succeeding in creating a temporary obstacle.

When he managed to push away the disorientation and break through the cloud, Shoto was faced with the sight of Freckles a considerable ways ahead.

Chagrined, Shoto threw himself forward, running as fast as his quirk and his legs could carry him. Finally on safe ground, he and Explosions picked up speed, but it wasn't enough to do more than chisel away the gap between them and Freckles.

Shoto ran and ran, but he still hadn't closed the gap by the time the light of the tunnel had grown close enough to touch, and when the crowd began to go wild, and Present Mic announced the winner, Shoto slammed his way through the entrance with the disappointing knowledge that he had been too late.

As winners waited for the rest of the participants to make their way through to the end, Shoto took the time to get his breath back.

He was relatively certain he had come in second place. It had been hard to tell, in the darkness of the tunnel, but as they came out of the mouth of it, Shoto had thought he managed to get in front.

No doubt they would announce it soon enough, so there was no point wasting time thinking on it. Shoto wiped at his sweaty forehead and tried to get his breathing under control.

He had pushed himself a bit harder than he had meant to, towards the end there, but he hadn't been expecting to need to, so he only had himself to blame. Obviously, he now needed to recalculate the odds; his classmates were more capable than he had expected, and while he had been wary of Explosions from the start, Shoto thought he had been right to add Freckles to his list of people to keep an eye out for:

_"Technically speaking, I am more powerful than you," Shoto said calmly, not all perturbed to be speaking such self-assured, arrogant sounding words, because they were entirely true. Freckles himself didn't look terribly upset by the words, though he did seem a bit nervous to hear them. Shoto ignored the way Iida, outraged, tried to force his way into the conversation, and continued: "And I know there's something going on between you and All Might. Don't worry, I won't press. I just want you to know that because of that connection, I have no recourse other than to beat you into the ground with everything I have, so… No hard feelings, I guess. Plus Ultra."_

_Refusing to feel embarrassed by the rather lame ending, Shoto turned to leave the waiting room, Present Mic—who would be serving as announcer for the festival—yelling that it was almost time to start nudging him out the door. _

He looked at Freckles as he remembered the way the race had gone, and the way Freckles (_Midoriya_, Shoto amended, with a mental sigh) had reacted to his declaration of war. Midoriya was clever, clever enough to get this far and finish first without needing to use his quirk even once. To get first, against even a few decent competitors, was hard; doing it without using your quirk was something Shoto would have considered impossible, before today.

Losing stung, especially with the knowledge that Endevor was in the crowd today, somewhere. But if Shoto had to lose to anyone, it was oddly satisfying to know he had lost to Midoriya, and not anyone else.

Shoto looked away, then, and went to grab one of the bottles on offer near the entrance. His side felt cold from his consistent use, which meant the always-present threat of dehydration was especially pressing. The sports drink felt amazing going down his throat, and Shoto drank deeply.

When everyone had finally staggered their way through the tunnels and gathered in a rough group, they announced the names of the winners.

Shoto felt slightly satisfied to see his name above Explo—above Bakugo (oh, was that his name?), and only a small twinge of dissatisfaction to see it below Midoriya's. But as Midnight went on to discuss the rules of the next event (a cavalry battle) and the allocation of points, Shoto narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. While the crowd turned as one to face Midoriya, every single visible eye glinting with greed, Shoto looked instead at the other students and began planning how, this time, he would claim a certain victory.


	10. Chariots of Fire

"I chose the three of you because, together, you make the most stable formation."

Shoto eyed his chosen team, feeling confident. Kaminari would be on the left, his electricity a deterrent to any approaching teams. On his right, Yaoyorozu would handle defense and insulation, so the only ones getting electrocuted would be the enemy. Iida would be the horse, the main defense and source of movement.

If a small part of why he had picked them was because they were the only names he could remember off the top of his head, well…

In any case, they had a strong team with a very high likelihood of winning.

"So you will be utilizing your fire and ice quirk to create diversions and attack incoming hostiles?" Iida asked.

Shoto looked to the stands, where a very visible figure stood, flames billowing from his specially created suit. "Not fire," he replied quietly. The knuckles on his hand went white as he squeezed his fingers into a fist, his eyes narrowing darkly. "As far as fighting goes, my ice is all I have ever needed, and I don't see that changing today."

Iida nodded slowly, looking like he wanted to pry further; but in the end, he shut his mouth. Shoto noted his reaction and was glad for it. He wasn't sure what would have come out of his mouth, and now wasn't the time to be alienating allies.

With their strategy in place and only a few minutes left on the countdown, Shoto got into position, and together with his team waited tensely for the round to start.

As Present Mic counted down the seconds, Shoto moved his focus to the point where it most mattered: the one million points. With his own 615 resting on his forehead, he was perfectly aware that they would also be a target, but was equally aware of how little that mattered: whoever targeted them was going to be in for a rude awakening, because Shoto was perfectly ready to bulldoze his way to his goal, regardless of who he had to trample over to get there.

The buzzer rang. As one, they moved.

Shoto used his ice to trip and re-route the attacking cavalry groups. A group from class B came at him, a girl with green hair shooting long, spikey strands out towards them. As Iida pushed jets of air from his legs and swung them about, Shoto twisted to the side and sent off a parting shot of ice. It didn't dislodge the rider—a boy with pale silver eyes and a nasty looking smirk—but it did get them scurrying away. Yaoyorozu created a long metal pole and handed it to Kaminari at one point, enabling him to run his quirk through it and electrify another group that tried to sneak up behind them. Three different groups attempted to get them at once, in a move that was suspiciously coordinated. Rather than wait, run or try to delegate their defense, Shoto simply created a massive barrier of ice and barked at Yaoyorozu to get them in the air, and Iida to get them around it. Five seconds later, Shoto had three bands in his hands, the cries of the defeated teams echoing in his ears.

They were so much closer now. He gave himself a second to glance up when Present Mic announced that the ranking would be revealed... and had to force himself to look away at what he had seen.

So many groups from Class A didn't have their points? Shoto resisted the urge to check again, because right now _everyone_ was the enemy. Still, it was an incredibly unexpected turn of events, and Shoto's mind went briefly to the strange encounter with the three teams and their failed ambush.

Hmmm, interesting. It seemed that Class B had decided on an interesting strategy to get them through the games.

Still, ultimately pointless.

Shoto touched the bands around his neck absently, already calculating the distance left to their goal and the quickest, most productive route to get there.

They could try as hard as they liked, but even when Shoto had the one million points around his neck, he had no intention of stopping there. By the time the buzzer rang for the end of the round, Shoto had every intention of carrying enough bands to put everyone out of the running.

Kaminari was yelping and sending a stream of electricity through the ground, disrupting a group from 1-A (Tentacles, his arms wrapped around his back, doubtless with his teammates inside), when Shoto caught the sound of explosions. He glanced to the side: Bakugo, band-less and looking mad as hell, with a large number of teams from Class B surrounding him.

An ambush, huh.

Shoto had had his talents honed to a very sharp edge over years and years of training. He'd had tactics beaten into him, strategy shoved down his throat till he couldn't contain any more, and done the same moves over and over and over again until he could practically do them in his sleep. It was thanks to this training that the images in his brain all snapped together at once to create a pattern, and Shoto was able to see the path laid out before him. He gave hurried orders to his team. In the distraction provided by the Class B teams, Team Todoroki was able to slip past the crowds and make their way to stand before Team Midoriya and the one million points.

They hadn't been the only ones to take advantage of the opportunity: four other teams stood about them, forming a loose semi-circle around Team Midoriya. Shoto marked two A teams and two B teams, but dismissed them in favor of Midoriya. If any of the teams survived the backlash of power that would be resulting from this clash, he would be able to get them later. For now—

"Iida, get us up close, and fast. Yaoyorozu, defense, and Kaminari—"

"Yeah, I got it," he said, sounding breathless with either excitement or fear, or a mixture of both.

Shoto breathed out an even, steadying breath, and leaned forward.

They moved.

Shoto pulled at the insulation sheet forming out of Yaoyorozu's stomach without having to look and threw it over his, Yaoyorozu, and Iida's bodies. Kaminari let his electricity loose, and all the teams surrounding them felt its full force. The long stick of metal that Yaoyorozu had formed and dragged across ground served as the connection Shoto needed to freeze the disoriented teams before they had a chance to recover.

"We're in a bit of a rush, so you're gonna have to bear with the ice for a while longer," he shouted for the sake of appearances. He didn't particularly care, but he did hope it would work to keep anyone from retaliating should there be significant damage as a result of his ice. Granted, considering his next move was to then steal a handful of headbands from the two B teams in passing, there was guaranteed to be some level of ill-will after this was all over with, anyway.

Ah, well. All's fair in love and war.

As they flew at Midoriya, head-on, his team's 'horse', Crow Boy (whose quirk was a parasitic shadow-creature called... Dark Shadow, was it? who was heading straight for Shoto) came flying at them. Tensing, Shoto shouted, "Yaoyoruzu!", and threw an arm up to guard his face. Thankfully, she was quick enough to create a stone guard to block its forceful attack, and Dark Shadow withdrew.

Iida kept them moving forward, even as Team Midoriya hurriedly fled backward. Shoto iced off any and all paths for escape. Frozen walls went up on all sides as they moved, so the opposing team had only one direction in which they could flee, and that direction met a natural end at the boundary line.

Shoto's mind produced the image of a cornered rabbit, and he felt a surge of vicious satisfaction.

All the other competition was out of the way. The one team Shoto had been concerned about—Bakugo's—was currently preoccupied, and likely would be for a while longer. They had their prey all to themselves, and though it felt a little childish, Shoto gave into the desire to revel in it.

…a feeling which began to slowly chip away, the longer it took to get the band they needed.

Shoto's brow began to furrow as they failed time and time again to get close enough to Midoriya.

Midoriya was being very, very cautious, and had an unfortunately good read on Shoto's team. He was staying consistently to the left of Yaoyorozu, so that if Shoto wished to freeze them over, Iida would be caught in the crossfire. If he kept shooting out ice indiscriminately, Team Todoroki were the ones who would be screwed. With Crow Boy able to defend against Kaminari's electricity and Shoto essentially hobbled, they weren't making any headway.

_Bastard_, came the unfriendly thought. Shoto glared icily at his target, frustration beginning to fill the lines of his shoulders. It was startling to realize that someone he had essentially dismissed from his list of 'threats worthy if notice' was proving to be an above-average opponent.

(_Midoriya Izuku. _The name seared itself into his mind, each glowing letter branding itself into place, and Shoto gritted his teeth and vowed to never forget it.)

Then, Iida spoke: "Everyone, there's less than a minute left on the timer. After this, you won't be able to use me anymore, so make it count!"

Shoto felt the shoulders under his fingers tense, and he blinked in surprise. He started to ask, "Iida?" When Iida brought his body weight forward over his knees and his engines began to whine, making Shoto shut his mouth with a snap.

"Get that headband, Todoroki," he demanded, and Shoto clenched his hands tightly in response.

_Torque-over, Reciproburst_.

They moved from zero to something like warp-speed in an instant, and it took all of the considerable muscles in Shoto's arms and legs to hold on as the world rushed past them.

Iida's plan crystallized in his mind in those blinding seconds that went rushing past, and the rate of his calculations sped up to match. He had maybe half-a-second to get this right. Shoto narrowed his focus, raised his hand, and when his fingers touched cloth, he clenched his fist as tight as he could.

They came to a stop a moment later, Iida's shoulders heaving, the rest of them coming down from the shock to their systems.

Shoto couldn't have stopped the shocked question on his lips if he tried.

"What the hell was that?" he demanded, incredulous.

Iida explained how his quirk—his leg engines—worked, and how by forcing more power into his engines, he had been able to reach incredible speeds... for the price of temporarily stalling them. He would essentially be unable to do more than be a physical barrier for the remainder of the event.

But in the end, that didn't matter. Shoto felt the cloth beneath his fingers and clenched all the harder. They hadn't won yet, but they had done what they set out to do. Satisfaction sat warm and glowing in his stomach as Shoto tied the band around his neck.

They had done it.

But Midoriya was gearing up to attack them again, his and his teammate's faces twisted with desperation, so Shoto put thoughts of victory aside to focus on their final, desperate attack.

He wasn't worried. The bands sat heavy and welcoming around his neck; his teammates were tired, but not burnt out just yet; he had yet to start shivering, and Yaoyorozu had plenty of ideas up her sleeve. There were only a handful of seconds left till the end of the event, and all they had to do was defend against one final, desperation fueled attack that would doubtless prove fruitless in the end.

Shoto tensed his body in preparation, and wasn't worried… until he was.

Because every single hair on his arms and the back of his neck rose as Midoriya's arms lit up with red, glowing lines. A thrumming feeling in the air, one that was painfully familiar, rose in tandem with the glowing arm as Midoriya closed in on him, and Shoto (in an instinctive move that would later horrify him) did what his mind screamed at him to do:

He raised his left arm, and flames came to life across his forearm in his defense. Then Midoriya was right in his face, and—

—air billowed, throwing his arm and his flame away from his face—

—and he turned to watch it, horrified at the realization of what he had done—

—and Midoriya was reaching out, that pressure gone, but the memory of it still pressing against his mind's eye—

—and a band was snatched from his neck.

Shoto distantly heard Midoriya shouting, but his eyes were paralyzed by the realization of what he had done.

He had used his fire. His _fire._

"Todoroki, please get a hold of yourself-"

He stroked a hand up and down his arm. His fire. He dug the fingers of his right hand into his leg, his face briefly contorting with the strength of his emotions. Then he took a deep breath, buried all of that down for later, and mentally tried to bring himself back into the game.

_Ten more seconds_.

"Kaminari!" Shoto shouted, and threw Yaoyorozu's insulation blanket about them as Kaminari electrocuted the air surrounding them, blocking Dark Shadow's incoming attack. In that same instant, Bakugo came shooting out of the wall of ice surrounding them, somehow in the air and away from his teammates in a move that should technically have disqualified him. He went high, then came falling, directly aimed for Shoto and very clearly screaming his name.

Iida tried to make his engines work, and failed. Shoto, mind whirring, called a terse: "Yaoyorozu!" She instantly produced for him conductive medal, and he iced it over, tensing in preparation for the incoming attack.

_Three… two… one_.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuz.

It was over. The two attacking teams froze, Bakugo dropping like a stone to fall on his face and Team Midoriya stuttering to a halt. Shoto watched the determination on Midoriya's face change to despair, and looked away.

They had won. Shoto hopped down from Iida's back, a curse escaping his lips.

The crowd was still going wild, the air buzzing with their excited energy. Shoto listened to the noise, his right hand rubbing his left arm while the cheers of his teammates echoed in his ears, and wondered why the victory felt so hollow.

_'I won't use my left-side', huh. Damn it_. If he kept this up, he would be doing exactly what the bastard wanted…

A glimmer of a plan formed in his mind, and as he gave it more consideration, it solidified. Determination gave him a second wind, and Shoto turned on his heel as they announced the start of the lunch break, and stalked after where he had last seen Midoriya.


	11. With or Without You

A/N: if you read this and found something you enjoyed, I'd love to hear from you!

* * *

"What did you want to talk to me about?" Midoriya asked.

He stood against the opposite wall of the tunnel leading to the inside of the stadium, the angle of the sun fully illuminating him while casting Shoto—head tipped against the wall, eyes unwavering—in shadow. It apparently made for an intimidating sight, as the twitching in Midoriya's hands and the micro-twitches of the muscles in his thighs and shoulders showed a deep uncertainty, as well as fear.

(His face was remarkably blank, for what his body was telling, and Shoto marked that down as something to remember).

Shoto hadn't intended to have that effect on his fellow winner, but perhaps it would serve some purpose in the long run. He kept his gaze on Midoriya even as he rearranged what he planned to say in his mind.

He had one chance to get this right. He couldn't let himself trip up over what he wanted to say, or let the content of his words send his mind to places they couldn't afford to go.

"Hey, ah, Todoroki? If we don't go soon there won't be any food left….um…"

Shoto half-opened his mouth, closed it, and tried again:

"That last second of the event, when you came at me with your quirk… I was completely overpowered; so much so that I broke a promise to myself that I had sworn to uphold."

He had to get this right. He brought his hand up and stared into the palm of his left hand, seeing through it to the awful power hiding under the paper-thin skin.

"Our teammates… none of them felt it. Only I, who had experienced that power first hand, recognized it for what it was."

"What… does that mean?" Midoriya asked. His hands had frozen at his sides, and his eyes were wide, but he looked like he knew the answer, and was afraid to hear it.

Shoto studied him intently, sharp eyes ready to spot and identify any possible tells as he said: "Midoriya, are you… All Might's secret love child or something?"

Midoriya's reaction was both satisfying and instructive; he immediately began waving his hands about his face, his head shaking wildly as he insisted that in absolutely no way was that true.

Though, Shoto noted, he didn't actually deny that they had something between them, just not a familial relation, something Shoto quickly called him out on. When Midoriya began to look like a deer caught in headlights, Shoto relented, because in the end, it didn't really matter.

This next part did, and this is where it got hard.

His breathing slowed, deliberately, as Shoto preemptively tried to stay calm and in control.

"My Father is the pro-hero Endeavor, as I'm sure you've heard by now."

A tremor was already building in his extremities, just from saying his name. Shoto breathed, deep and even, and pushed on regardless.

"He's been stuck as the Number Two forever. He's never been able to rise up, and he's carried a grudge for years. If you have something from the Number One Hero, then…"

He had closed his eyes without meaning to, and now he opened them to glare at Midoriya, hoping the burning rage in his eyes would read as determination.

"…Then I have all the more reason to beat you."

He explained how his Father's mind worked: the way he had fought to reach the top using brute force and the power of his quirk; how All Might's casual rise to the top infuriated him beyond belief; how his frustration at his continued failure had made him look elsewhere to complete his goals.

"What are you talking about, Todoroki-kun?" Midoriya asked, a hint of frustration in his voice, arms gripped in front of his chest protectively, as if to guard himself from the words coming out of Shoto's mouth. "What are you trying to say?"

Shoto looked at him levelly, trying the words out on his tongue, and said: "What do you know about quirk marriages?"

The next few minutes were… hard. Very hard.

Shoto kept his voice and face neutral through sheer willpower, and through the pain of the nails digging into his legs through the hands pressed into his pants pockets.

Quirk marriages had come about during the second and third generation after superpowers had emerged. Families would force other families—some with literal force, others with bribery, blackmail and other unsavory methods—to marry into their own for the sole purpose of merging two strong quirks together, in the hopes of making newer, and stronger, ones. It was a different time, back then, before society began trying out the idea of 'Heroes' in earnest, and things like 'morals' and 'appearances' started to become important once again.

Father had money and fame, and when he used both of those things to woo Mother's family, it was a simple matter to get them to agree to a marriage.

From there, Father's dream of creating a hero to surpass All Might began to seem like a reality.

Shoto sneered at the floor, his mind producing unwanted images of the man in question, and bringing hate and bile rising in his throat to meet and mix with his rage.

"It's so damn aggravating…" Shoto snarled, unable to stop the words from rolling off his tongue. He would not become the tool of that absolute scum of the Earth, so help him.

(_Mother stood, turned away from him. Her back was bowed, her shoulders hunched and shuddering with every hitched breath as she sobbed into her hands. _

_Shoto raised a hand, reaching out to her—_)

"In my memories," he said, and brought his hand up slowly to his face, not seeing it, "Mother is always crying. One day, she said: 'You left side is ugly,' and poured boiling water over my face."

He brought his hand up to his scar and touched it, feather-light—the symbol that strove him to be better, stronger, fight harder.

Midoriya's horrified gasp reminded him of his audience, and Shoto dropped his hand, allowing Midoriya to see the truth in his words that he tried the best he could to show on his face.

He laid his challenge at Midoriya's feet, his promise not to use his fire a pledge both to Midoriya, as well as to himself. He would not use his fire. He would win, and beat Midoriya, without—no. He would win, in spite of his father's power, and prove to him once and for all that he was not, and would not, be his pawn.

Having said what he wanted to say, Shoto pushed himself off the wall and began to walk.

He thought of something as he stepped out of the tunnel, and told Midoriya over his shoulder:

"I won't pry into what's going on between you and All Might, that's none of my business. It doesn't matter anyway, because, in the end, I will rise to the top with only my left side and beat everyone else attempting to do the same, regardless of their circumstances. Sorry for wasting your time."

Shoto let the conversation drop, satisfied that he had gotten across what he wanted to say. Midoriya, it seemed, had another idea. When Shoto finally left him far behind, it was with these words ringing in his ears:

"That declaration of war you gave me earlier today… I'm ready to return it! I will beat you, too!"

* * *

Shoto had managed to get through the conversation intact; sadly, his appetite had not. With only one hour left till the start of the next event, Shoto dithered at the classroom door.

He had his lunch box in his bag, as always. But on a day like today, with ash again on his tongue and fire dancing behind his eyes, and the overwhelming pressure of his father's physical presence (imagined though it may be, with multiple concrete walls between them) pressing him in on all side, the thought of obediently eating his specifically prepared lunch made him want to break something.

But the thought of lining up in that crowded room, then trying again to find a place to sit…

His stomach lurching at the thought of it, Shoto was pretty sure that option would have to stay off the table.

But he needed the energy. Already he could feel himself flagging, the tension from riding the constant adrenaline high beginning to fade as tiredness set in. He needed to eat.

He wavered for one more second, before turning on his heel before he could change his mind.

There was no rule saying you had to eat the cafeteria food only in the cafeteria (he had been careful to look that up, after the first incident), he just hadn't had the chance to utilize that loophole until now.

Get in, buy the food, take it outside before anyone noticed he was there. There were plenty of empty stairwells and classrooms, after all; there was bound to be somewhere he could hide out for a few minutes in peace.

His fingers shook, rattling the wooden chopsticks as he tried to pick up a clump of rice. It wobbled and dropped back into his plate, the attempt failing. Shoto snarled quietly and tried twice more before succeeding.

The wait in line at the cafeteria had taken more out of him than he had realized.

A few of his classmates had noticed him standing in line, and unlike before, when he would pass them by and they would either stare at him until he looked their way or tried to pretend he didn't exist altogether, they waved at him, gesturing for him to come over. Shoto either stared through them, or pretended he hadn't noticed.

Thankfully, they took the hint and didn't press when he speed-walked past a few of them with his full tray of food, and very obviously in the direction of the door.

There was one moment that nearly ended badly, where he passed Shoji's table—he'd thought Shoji brought lunch every day, but that apparently wasn't the case—and the large boy waved at him and asked if he wanted to join his table.

Eyeing the small space between Tsu-chan and, of all people, Purple Balls, Shoto couldn't stop the incredulous look he shot at Shoji, who quickly raised his hands in the air defensively.

"All right, no pressure, I just thought I'd ask. Are you planning on… I mean, I hope you enjoy your lunch. See you at the next event."

"Hey hey hey, Shoji, what's that about? Why are you inviting scary-face—"

"Feel free to come eat with us any time, Todoroki-kun, ribbit. This idiot will most likely not be here next time, ribbit, so you do not have to worry."

"Hey!"

Shoto lingered a moment, ignoring the two others and staring at Shoji (who eyed him back patiently with two sets of eyes on two different limbs), before turning back to the door.

Shoji was… good. Tsu-chan wasn't terrible, really, but Shoji was good people.

Shoto dodged his way through the sea of people, doing his best to ignore the occasional, "What the-" or "Hey, where's that guy going-" as he speed-walked his way through the halls and into the first secluded corner he could find, which happened to be behind a teacher's desk in an empty classroom.

There, he tried to eat lunch with hands that shook from the draining anxiety of the past few minutes, as well as the large number of other things on his mind.

But he didn't have the time for this; there were only thirty-minutes left before the end of the break, and he needed time to digest. If he didn't eat anything, his focus and stamina would suffer, as would his control of his quirk. This wasn't like at home on weekends or holidays, where he could skip eating for entire days so long as Father wasn't there to micro-manage his caloric intake. If he didn't eat now, his performance would suffer, and he ran the real chance of fainting in a very, very public setting, with Endeavor actually in the stands to watch him fail on live television. The thought sent his insides swooping, and Shoto's fingers clenched around the thin wood as he tried his best to bring his heart-beat down and his limbs to settle.

It didn't work, even after he had tried three different breathing exercises and pressed hard against fresh bruises. In desperation, he finally resorted to doing something that brought heat rising in his cheeks that had nothing to do with his quirk: he ate with his hands.

By the time his plate was empty—thankfully, he had chosen the daily special, not the curry or _katsudon_—the tips of his right hand were fully capable of handling the heat of the food that had slowly cooled as he ate it. Still, the heat in his cheeks lingered as he produced then melted ice off his hand to clean it, and got to his feet with only a minor grimace at the soreness in his limbs.

He already felt better for eating. Even if he had gone about it in a way that left him feeling slightly humiliated, it wasn't like anyone had been around to see it, so there was no use dwelling.

Picking up his tray, Shoto left the room and headed back to the cafeteria, noting, but ignoring, the occasional double-take from the students he passed by.

This… could work. If he did it too often, there was a chance someone would try to follow him, which would be a definite worst-case scenario, so he would have to limit it to once or twice a week at most. Perhaps… if it was only sometimes… he could try sitting with Shoji.

The idea had merit, and didn't fill him with dread the way eating with anyone else might have, so Shoto nodded absently to himself and mentally jotted it down as an option to consider.

After getting rid of his tray and high-tailing it out of there, Shoto made his leisurely way towards the stadium.

* * *

At the stadium, once it was time to announce the theme of the final, tournament-style event, there were a number of surprises.

The first was the sudden and surprising withdrawals.

Shoto looked askance at 'Ojiro-kun'—his classmate with the tail and martial arts training, whose name he hadn't remembered till Midnight had called it—as he raised his hand and asked to withdraw from the tournament.

Stepping down from a potentially life-changing event like this, over something as simple as pride? Shoto felt a stirring of disdain in his gut and fought to keep the corner of his lips from curling upwards in a sneer of disgust.

Cowards always used pathetic excuses to avoid having to face their fear of failure. There was a twinge in the back of his mind at the thought, something like guilt attempting to wind its way to the forefront of his mind, but Shoto ignored it. Let him withdraw; he would only have himself to blame, down the road, when it came time to choose a hero agency to intern at and he discovered that he had no offers.

The second surprising thing was the fact that the 1-A girls were dressed in cheerleading uniforms.

His brow furrowing in confusion, Shoto looked from the embarrassed looking girls—as Ojiro called them out, a hand slapped over his eyes—to where Kaminari and Purple Balls stood together, snickering gleefully to each other and eyeing the girls in a predatory way that Shoto did not like at all. He had a distinct feeling he knew what had happened. Purple Balls was starting to show a pattern of behavior that Shoto strongly disapproved of, but this was not something he had expected of Kaminari.

If Shoto were any other person, he imagined he would walk up to Kaminari and say: _I expected better from you, because you know better, and you are better. You are above this behavior, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. _

But in the end, that was not the sort of person Shoto was, so he compromised. He stared fixedly at Kaminari until, perhaps feeling the strength of his look, the boy turned to look at him. When their eyes met, Shoto did his upmost to project his extreme disapproval and disappointment, and was gratified when Kaminari's face turned white, and he quickly looked down at his feet and took a few steps away from Purple Balls.

They weren't friends, he and Kaminari, but they weren't… unfriendly. It would have been unpleasant to know that someone, whose name he had bothered to remember, would do something so disgraceful and unpleasant. Shoto was pleased to think that Kaminari had been cured of his ill-thought behavior, and put the whole thing out of his mind to take in what Midnight was saying.

They would be having one-on-one, no-holds-barred (other than the obvious) fights. The thought was a thrilling one, full of possibilities, and Shoto's heart-rate picked up.

A few members of Class B would be taking place of the Ojiro and the B student who had also dropped out, but Shoto paid that no mind as he impatiently waited for Midnight to announce the order for the one-on-one fights.

There: his name. Against Sero… Hanta. Shoto scrunched his brow, wracking his brain for who that could possibly be… and came up blank. Ah, well. That person was less important than who he had next in his line-up.

_Midoriya Izuku_.

Shoto felt… something, spread from his chest and out through the tip of his fingers. Fear? Excitement? Determination? A mix of all three? Shoto didn't know, only that it made his heart race and his tension sky-rocket.

He would meet Midoriya, and he would utilize his powers against a strong, surprisingly powerful opponent; this was his best, and possibly last, chance to truly prove himself to Midoriya, to the world, and most importantly, to his father, that he could reach the top only using his mother's quirk.

Present Mic announced the short recreational interlude, giving the students who were still in the running a chance to rest and get their thoughts and plans together for the oncoming tournament. Shoto used the chance to escape somewhere outside and away from everyone, needing to re-discover that small moment of peace that he had found in that empty classroom.

He found a place quickly enough, a shaded spot outside the stadium but still on school grounds. (Security was extra tight today, the patrols so thick with pro-heroes that it hadn't even occurred to him to try his luck leaving the premises, which was for the best—no doubt he would have been disqualified instantly if he had been caught.)

He pressed up against the wall, in a darkly shaded corner, and slid down into a crouch. Lowering his head to lean over his thighs, Shoto closed his eyes and opened his ears to hear:

Tree branches, their leaves rustling in the wind with every passing breeze. The distant sound of voices, audible even outside the stadium walls. The boom-boom-boom of fireworks, far enough away not to send him flying to his feet at the sound. The sound of birds, chirping cheerfully, and the flap of their wings as they took flight.

Shoto listened, and breathed, letting his mind drift within the safe confines of this quiet little world, and slowly brought himself into a quiet state of calm.

If only he could always make his world like this—still, peaceful. Alone.

His phone buzzed, some indeterminate time later, and Shoto reluctantly got to his feet. His match would be the second, after Midoriya, so he had best wait in the waiting rooms in order to not miss the signal for his match.

* * *

It was time.

Present Mic's voice announced the winner (Midoriya, something that sent relief shooting through him, though he hadn't doubted the other boy would persevere, not truly).

Shoto stood up out of his chair and left the waiting room, feeling unmotivated and eager to get this fight over with. His eyes were already on the future, where a fight he was desperate to have awaited.

(This, for Sero Hanta, would prove to be a very unfortunate thing.)

But before that could happen, something else did.

Shoto turned the corner that would lead to the exit into the arena, and paused.

"You're in my way," he said, as coldly as if the ice of his quirk had merged with his words, sending them on a freezing path to their intended target.

"You are an embarrassment, Shoto," said the Number Two Hero, Endeavor. He stood, his arms crossed and fire billowing, to one side of the narrow hallway—not actually blocking the way, but near to it.

Shoto's eyes flicked between the wall and the large man across from it, cold eyes calculating the distance and the odds of being able to pass the man without touching him. A final glance at the man decided him, and Shoto started walking again, determined to get away as fast as possible.

Rage, a cold, solid thing, sat heavy within him, and Shoto used that weight to move his trembling body past the flames that eagerly licked at his uniform.

His uniform was not (as his father had demanded he request) fireproof because Shoto had no intention of using his fire. This made catching fire from Endeaver's quirk a serious concern. He edged closer to the wall, and tilted his body to the side as he passed.

He did his best to tune out the word-vomit spewing from the bastard's mouth, but as he walked past, some of the words began to get to him. Shoto gritted his teeth and picked up the pace slightly, but he couldn't leave fast enough.

The words that left his mouth—in answer to his father's absolutely unacceptable statement that he was different from his siblings, as well his greatest masterpiece—were dark and heavy with resentment and anger.

"Is that all you have to say? You should know, old man, that I plan to win using Mom's power, and hers alone. Your power has no place here."

"Even if that works for now," the words followed him as he moved towards the light, said with all the smug assurance that could be packed into a single sentence, "you will very soon reach the limit of that power."

His face twisted into a ferocious, angry mask, Shoto drove the words from his mind and moved forward, his control veering one step closer to the edge.

Shoto stood on the stage as the dramatic fire of the decorative pits in the four corners of the stage billowed dramatically, the name of his opponent (who he did recognize, though only distantly, as Elbows, the student with a quirk that produced a tape-like substance) and Shoto's announced over the large sound system.

His mismatched eyes, hidden behind his hair, glared forwards and past Sero, to the point in his future where Midoriya was waiting; behind him, his back turned to the man who had caused him more grief than he could ever put to words, and to whom he had so much he had to prove.

There were, theoretically, a couple of ways Shoto could go about this battle, but as the seconds ticked down, he knew that there had really only been one option from the start.

The buzzer rang, present Mic announced, "STAAAAAAAART!", and his opponent sent tape whizzing in his direction.

Shoto didn't bother trying to dodge. Sero dragged his limp, unresisting body towards the boundary.

Perhaps Sero felt confident; perhaps he knew the difference in their power, and was desperate enough to try to win regardless; maybe he really thought that he had a chance.

Whatever the case, Shoto felt only the tiniest twinge of regret at what he was about to do, one that was quickly burned out in the gradually building flames of Shoto's burning resentment and rage.

He lifted his head as the boundary line came closer and closer, and said, with dark humor in his voice:

"Sorry about this."

It was said that All Might could change the weather itself with one, concussive blast from his powerful fist. Shoto… wasn't All Might, but he could do the next best thing. So Shoto touched his foot to the ground, and proceeded to do just that.

In the silence afterward, when his massive iceberg had finished shaking the foundations of the building as it shot up and out of the stadium, having filled the whole of it and nearly destroyed part of the arena, Shoto stood and breathed out puffs of white air, his mind blissfully quiet. The dark emotions simmered, but seeing the ice, in all of its cold, expansive glory, settled him, reminding him that he was perfectly justified in his course of action.

It would have been different, if his power had been weak and faltering, his control uncertain and all over the place. Here, with millions of people as his witness, he stood, tall and proud, having done the equivalent of shouting at his Father, saying: _Look at me. See what I can do, without you, _in spite of you_._

It would have been the perfect punctuation to a perfectly created statement of intent if he had been allowed to turn his back and walk off that stage, head held high, back a solid rejection of everything Father wanted him to be.

Sadly, reality reasserted itself shortly after his dramatic move. The moment Midnight announced the win and the crowd began an uncertain—then gradually, uproarious—round of applause, Cementoss and Midnight came rushing onto the stage, urging him to melt the ice and get Sero out before there was any permanent damage. Shoto obliged easily, putting out his right hand and sending heat through the gigantic iceberg. In a matter of minutes, Sero was flopping to the ground, and medical personnel were ushering him off the stage and to Recovery Girl.

That wasn't the end of it, of course.

Shoto watched the faces of the pros as they looked about the ruined stage, and felt distinctly amused at the rising look of horror on their faces as they realized something that should have occurred to them from the start:

When you melt ice, particularly such an incredibly large quantity of it… that ice has to go somewhere, doesn't it? It doesn't just… disappear into thin air.

As the sky rained down entire bathtubs-full of water, Shoto finally turned and made his way off the stage. This wasn't his problem. He'd done what he intended to do, and now he was going to find somewhere quiet to sit and rest off some of the fatigue clinging to his bones.

He made his way through the hallways, silent and empty now that any available personal had been called to help out with the mess in the arena. Present Mic announced a short break due to the necessary clean up over the loudspeaker, and fighting a smirk that was completely unfair to all the people who would be panicking right about now (did he care? Not really), Shoto made his ambling way over to one of the waiting rooms.

The next match was… He mentally called up the image of the tournament listings, and recalled that Bakugo would be going against… Ura…raka?

Hmmm. That was not a name he was familiar with. Shoto pushed open the door to Waiting Room 5, poked his head in to make sure it was empty, and stepped inside.

He pulled out a chair at one of the tables and sat himself down. There was a table with light snacks and drinks neatly lined up for participants to partake of, and Shoto regretted having sat down, because the fatigue from using his quirk so extensively was beginning to really make itself known, and the thought of going to get the drink he wanted was awful.

A thought occurred to him as he stared at a sports drink and took in the label without really seeing it.

His classmates… he should really remember their names, shouldn't be?

Shoto began tapping the table-top with his left hand, shifting to lean over the table and rest his chin on his right.

The thought was surprisingly irritating. Perhaps it was the residual negative emotions from his confrontation with his father speaking, but Shoto found that he was annoyed at the idea that he might have to learn their names, due to some unspoken social obligation.

What did it matter, whether or not he knew their names? He knew the quirks of almost every student in his class and a number from Class 1-B; that was already more than a majority of his classmates could probably claim.

When a child is born, their parents give them a title, something to call themselves by. As they grow, they learn to identify themselves by that name, and as they slowly but surely grow into it, that name gains weight, something they use to tell the world who they are. Without it, Shoto could easily imagine any one of his classmates feeling an intense sense of loss, along with any number of other negative emotions.

Shoto rolled his name around in his head as he moved his tapping fingers over to his left bicep.

_Todoroki Shoto_. Shoto. Todoroki.

The syllables had the calming weight of familiarity and comfort behind them. Shoto, too, had carried the weight of his name from the day of his birth, and while there were some bad memories and unpleasant emotions associated with it, overall, Shoto felt that the pleasant memories he had clung to for so long could easily outweigh the bad.

Even so, if given the choice…

_Todoroki Shoto_, he mouthed into the silent room.

Even so. If given the choice, Shoto would erase his name from existence in a heartbeat.

Present Mic's voice came screeching in his ears, announcing the end of the break and the start of the next fight, to begin in five minutes.

Shoto sat up and rolled his shoulders, considering. Bakugo was a wild card that Shoto had no doubt he would be facing later on in the tournament.

Bakugo's demand to be seen and heard, coupled with his versatile and powerful quirk, called for a level of caution Shoto hadn't thought he would need upon entering this school (an arrogant thought, perhaps, but one Shoto still considered to be mostly true). Bakugo didn't raise the same level of caution in Shoto that Midoriya did, but he was powerful enough that Shoto seriously considered the merits of watching his next fight.

The thought of the roaring crowds set his teeth on edge and his skin tingling, but there was nothing for it.

Shoto made his way out of the waiting room and headed towards the stands, telling himself that it would be a short, easy fight, anyway, and he could leave any time he felt the urge.

* * *

In the stands a short time later, Shoto found himself reconsidering his earlier assumption.

This did not, in any way, seem like it would be an easy or simple fight.

Shoto leaned forward unconsciously, entranced by the clever dance unfolding on the concrete stage below him.

There had been few open seats left by the time he made his way to the 1-A seating booth, but Shoto hadn't wanted to be noticed, so he'd slipped through the door and into the shadowy corner by the back wall. He figured he'd slip in, watch for a minute or two as Bakugo decimated his opponent, and slip back out to prepare mentally for his fight with Midoriya.

He hadn't expected to have his attention arrested only a few minutes into the fight.

At first glance, it seemed like a one-sided beat down.

The girl Bakugo was fighting—Gravity, Shoto recalled upon seeing her face—kept up a continuous full-frontal charge with little subtlety, and little apparent success.

Every time she came in range of Bakugo's quirk, he blasted her away with painful and accurate explosions. Shoto recalled that her quirk required her to have a five-fingered contact before it could work, which explained her continuous, bull-headed attack pattern.

There had been an interesting moment, where she had used her jacket as camouflage to step through the smoke and attempt an ambush, but that had failed, and every attack since then had been the same simple, ineffective charge.

Still, for all that it appeared thoughtless and desperate… Shoto's eyes narrowed around the time she had made her fourth attack, been beaten back, and still tried again.

Still. There was something going on here that he wasn't seeing. What was—

Shoto's eyes caught on the movement of something small and gray as it shot into the sky. Rubble was constantly flying about, due to Bakugo's continued attempts to destroy his opponent and his surroundings with extreme prejudice, but something about the rubble—

Shoto's eyes followed the gray rocks up and up and up… and stopped. Then, slowly, he began to smile.

Clever. Shoto leaned against the wall, the smile still lightly touching his lips. Clever, and interesting.

Mousy-brown hair in a short bob, a round, kind face with smiling eyes, and a fairly useful and interesting quirk. Shoto hadn't given her too much thought, as all of those characteristics were a dime a dozen in even UA's Hero Course, and she hadn't had the presence of someone truly worth being wary of.

This interesting display, however…

It was about this time that some of the members of the audience began shouting down at the two fighters, condemning Bakugo for his 'unheroic actions' against a girl, and how he should 'have pity on her and send her out of the boundary'.

Shoto side-eyed the heroes that were now standing up and booing, contempt curling the corner of his lip. Were they blind? Did they not see?

Aizawa-sensei's voice unexpectedly boomed from the speakers, and Shoto's head shot to the announcer's box automatically. He listened, one eye on the crowd and the other on the arena, as Sensei scathingly shot down the booers, and condemned them for their lack of awareness. Shoto's lips twitched up in amusement at his teacher's interesting choice of words: 'go home and consider other employment'? Harsh. Shoto had distantly respected his teacher from day one, if only for the way he effortlessly controlled a rowdy class with an iron hand; then at USJ, when he had put himself on the line to protect his students against a full crowd of villains—with no thought for his own safety—and in the end, walked away with nearly debilitating injuries, but with not one student lost, that respect had changed from distant, to something solid and real.

Now, that respect shot up once again, along with his wariness, because Shoto had vaguely understood that their homeroom teacher cared about their future and wellbeing in so far as his work required it of him, but he hadn't realized the true depth of his regard.

This… could prove to be difficult, should anything… happen.

Shoto ran his hand over his chin, possible scenarios rolling through his mind, but another loud explosion reminded him that there were other things he ought to be concentrating on, so he put it out of his mind for the time being.

Gravity was looking very battered by this point and, eyes on the space high above the arena, Shoto thought that it was right about the time she would be pulling out her final trump card.

He leaned forward, arms crossed and eyes narrowed, determined to catch the moment she made her move.

He was rewarded seconds later as she paused—her mouth moving around words too quiet to catch—and her spread fingers touched together in a five-fingered contact. Shoto's eyes immediately shot up in time to see—

A meteor shower.

Concrete debris—some seemingly large enough that Shoto imagined they could kill a person on contact, falling from that height—fell like rain, clumps of all sizes dropping from the sky like a shower of stars, inversely dark against the bright rays of the sun.

Shoto's eyes followed them down, admiration building, because it had been a very clever move against an opponent like Bakugo, with such heavy firepower and incredibly quick reasoning skills.

Unfortunately, however…

Shoto's fingers gripped his forearms tightly in sympathy as Bakugo stood, still as a statue, save for the arm he slowly raised to the sky, palm open, the red-gold of his quirk building.

Unfortunately, from the look of Bakugo's body language, despite all of Gravity's preparations and crazy-but-useful ideas, this wasn't going to end the way she thought it would.

Shoto was proven right a second later when the massive, concussive blast from Bakugo's hand blew every single bit of rubble—and his opponent, as well—harmlessly away from his body. When the billowing wind from the blast died down (Shoto had tucked his body as far into the corner as it would go to avoid it, something his classmates hadn't managed if their screaming was any indication), there was a clear, empty circle of space around Bakugo, and his opponent was lying flat on the ground, energy apparently spent.

Eyeing the scale of the debris and what he could recall of the girl's quirk limits, stamina, and muscle mass, Shoto grimly concluded that, even if she managed to get to her feet, there would be no more future for her in this fight.

Shoto found himself oddly reluctant to witness such an unfortunate end to a very risky but well-executed plan, but he made himself stand witness until Midnight came forward and announced the win.

Then he turned and swiftly made his way out of the box, his mind finished analyzing what he had seen and already moving on to the next fight.

_Uraraka Ochako_. The name hovered in front of his mind, smoothly inserting itself in front of a draft of a plan to counteract Midoriya's quirk.

Shoto paused, half-way to the arena entrances, and gave that name the acknowledgment it deserved.

Then he shut off all thoughts that weren't relevant to his next fight, and walked towards the next step in his plan to beat his father through the sheer strength of his spite.


	12. In the Blood

Warning: canon-typical child abuse and spousal abuse, and Endeavor, who should come with his own trigger warning.

* * *

_"Ladies and gentlemen, it's the first match of the second round!" _

Shoto stalked his way up the stairs to the stage, tunnel vision already forming. His surroundings didn't matter; the roaring crowds, the tense forms of Midnight and Cementoss, and the towering figure wreathed in flames (Shoto's eyes had caught onto the person they had waited to see the second he stepped out of the tunnel and had ignored it ever since) didn't matter.

Midoriya had two fingers on his left hand bandaged. Shoto flicked his eyes down and quickly up again as he settled in his place across the stage. Good. That meant he would truly have a limited amount of times he could use his quirk.

As Present Mic stirred the crowds into a frenzy, Shoto stared into green eyes and thought: _Here we are, finally. Are you ready to begin? _

Midoriya's eyes glinted back at him, the look in them all determination and focus: _Yes, I'm ready. _

Shoto narrowed his eyes, and Present Mic readied his call to start.

Whether he had limited chances or not, giving Midoriya a chance to use his quirk would be a mistake. With that in mind, Shoto pulled his leg back and readied his stance to throw out his power the second the buzzer rang.

_"Are you ready? …START!" _

His quirk shot out through his right foot the second the last syllable left the pro-hero's lips. Frozen spikes burst out of the stage in a quickly building barrage that swallowed up ground in seconds. Shoto caught sight of Midoriya through the gaps in the ice—his wrist braced, hand glowing with lines of shining red—and clenched the muscles in his legs in preparation.

Even knowing what was coming, Shoto was thrown back by the massive gust of wind that exploded out of Midoriya's hand. His ice stood up to the force for one, two seconds, before shattering and flying backward. Shoto himself had had the forethought to place an ice barrier behind him, but it still knocked the breath out of him when he was slammed against it.

He breathed in and out evenly in the seconds that followed, eyes sharply focused to catch any movement, and thought: _So that's how its gonna be, is it? _

As the wind cleared, the clouds of ice parted to reveal Midoriya, left hand clenched around his right, the middle finger of his right hand dark purple and clearly broken in multiple places.

His opponent was obviously prepared to go to extreme lengths to meet his attacks. Shoto narrowed his eyes and shifted his stance in preparation, because what could he do in the face of such determination, but meet it head-on?

He sent his next attack, a sweeping surge of jagged blocks of ice, and was met with the same blast of wind. He brought his hands up to protect his face from the icy flurry, but managed to hold his position this time. He lowered his hands as it passed, and didn't immediately attack again.

Goading him into attacking first obviously wasn't an option; one glance at the pained, intense look on Midoriya's face told him that unless he got creative with his attacks, this was going to turn into a battle of attrition, wherein the one who held out the longest would win.

A smart move, Shoto had to acknowledge, as he exhaled white clouds into the building chill. Smart, but irritating. He found himself growing restless in the short pause between attacks, wanting Midoriya to go on the offensive, despite knowing that it wasn't going to happen.

Shoulders pulling forwards in annoyance, Shoto brought his foot forward and threw out his next attack, only to again be met by Midoriya's quirk.

It was time to change things up.

"I'll do my best not to drag this out," he promised through gritted teeth. He then hunched his back and threw his arms out for balance as he cast his next attack. On the wings of that attack (even as Midoriya met his ice with the unstoppable force of his quirk), Shoto created the beginnings of a mammoth construct with his quirk: a towering of glittering ice, one that grew further upwards as he ran up its length, to take him up and above Midoriya.

At the apex of his ice tower, and just as Midoriya smashed his platform, Shoto jumped, twisting his body as he fell to bring up his right hand for his next attack.

Midoriya looked up, face twisted from the pain of his fifth shattered finger, this last one on his still-damaged left hand, and jumped back as Shoto brought his hand smashing into the ground. His quirk shot out of the point of contact, creating reaching fingers of ice that chased after the fleeing Midoriya.

His ice, in the end, was faster: his quirk met Midoriya's outstretched-foot—still in the middle of jumping backward—and quickly grew, threatening to climb up his leg, and higher still. Shoto stayed where he was, tensed, in preparation for Midoriya's next move. A part of him hoped that the ice would move fast enough to encase the other boy before he could throw out his next attack, but Shoto began building a solid wall behind him, just in case.

Then—

A cold hurricane threw him off his feet.

Shoto flew through the barrier he had created, shattering it and stealing his breath, and flew still farther back, before finally finding his footing. He scrambled to create another wall and barely managed to catch himself and build a hasty shield in front of him before he went over the boundary line.

He got to his feet, slowly, as the winds cleared, and called out:

"That was considerably stronger than your last few attacks, wasn't it."

The ice shield in front of his broke off and shattered at his feet as he stood, slightly breathless still, and stood tall and strong to glare down at the boy on the other side of the stage.

"Is that your way of telling me to keep my distance?"

That last, desperate move to stop his momentum had almost depleted his quirk. Shoto's right arm trembled from the building cold, his right side not made to withstand it for long, and he knew without looking that the skin would be turning pale-white from frostbite.

Still, what he had left would have to be enough. He had shown the world—and Endeavor—what he was capable of. Speaking of which…

"Look at you, Midoriya," he taunted, his concentration only half on the words coming out of his mouth as his eyes searched the stands for his target. "All you've been doing is defending, but you look dead on your feet. I hope I'm not being too hard on you."

Ah, but taunting a man when he was down wasn't very good sport, was it? Shoto's eyes found what they had been looking for, and opened wide in triumph at what they saw. Endeavor's face in the stands was tense with displeasure, and the sight of it sent a grim thrill through his shivering body. He exhaled, once, and allowed the resulting cloud of steam to cover the welcome sight.

"If I have been… well, my bad. But I have to thank you, Midoryia," he continued, giving the man one last, triumphant look. "Thanks to you, my father's face has gone dark and clouded."

He turned to his opponent, feeling both grateful and slightly apologetic.

It was time to end this.

"With both your arms destroyed, there's not much you can do, is there? You're finished," Shoto said, pointedly, but not unkindly. He felt strangely benevolent in the wake of his triumph, and felt the urge to make this as painless and easy for his opponent as possible.

He couldn't have done this without him, after all.

"Let's get this over with."

With nearly the last of his swiftly dwindling power, in the last few minutes before the frost completely overtook his right side and he succumbed to hypothermia, Shoto sent out a large, swiftly building tidal wave of ice, his largest yet, and waited for the inevitable.

But instead of the graceful defeat he had expected from Midoriya, green eyes glared malevolently up at him from under scraggly green locks, and the boy snarled at him: "What the _hell_ are you looking at?"

The words, and the vicious way they had been delivered, physically jolted him back, and Shoto released a surprised breath, his eyes going wide.

A large burst of wind destroyed his attack in the next second, and Shoto's eyes only went wider as he went flying backward, sliding and scrambling to get his feet under him, and barely managed to build a wall to stop his momentum before he crossed the boundary.

Shoto gasped in the aftermath, unable to fathom how completely he had been caught off guard.

"You crazy bastard," he rasped, stunned eyes tracking the damage, "you used your already broken fingers…?"

He rose to his feet, slow in his shock, and wondered aloud, "What's driving you to go this far?"

"Have you seen yourself? You're trembling, Todoroki," came the reply. Shoto looked up sharply, snapped out of his confused wonder. Something that wasn't cold trembled to life in his body, and Shoto felt a strange premonition of dread.

"Quirks are just another manifestation of your physical abilities. There's a limit to how much your body can take of your quirk, isn't there?"

When Midoriya hit on the simple cure for his right side's limits—using his left side, his fire, to warm his right—Shoto tensed, dread shifting to annoyance. It had only been a matter of time before someone noticed, but Shoto had been hoping he could get through the entire festival without it coming out.

Midoriya clenched his teeth and began to close his fist as he bit out the next sentence:

"Everyone is trying their absolute hardest to reach their dreams, to be number one… and you want to win using only half of your quirk?"

Shoto stared down at the seething boy, that uncomfortable something settling in his gut as Midoriya made direct eye contact for emphasis, and finished with:

"Are you even trying? You have yet to put even a _single scratch_ on me!"

The hoarse yell stung like a slap to the face, and Shoto nearly reached up to his cheek, sure he would find heat there to match the way his breath had completely left him.

"Come at me with everything you've got!" Midoriya screamed, his fist clenched around his broken fingers.

The air in Shoto's lungs tightened as the intent of the other boy's words crawled across the skin of his unused half. "Come at you with everything I've got?" he shot back, something awful bulging out from the lump in his gut. It spread its decaying roots throughout his body, sending sharp spikes of anger through sensitive nerves and intertwining with ribs already throbbing from repeated abuse. It was an ugly feeling to go with an ugly emotion, and Shoto felt his mouth twitch up in a snarl. "Did my shitty old man buy you off or something?"

He sprang forward, that ugliness catching fire to become a burning rage.

His feet quickly closed the distance separating them, but he found himself moving slower than his rage commanded he run as the overuse of his quirk truly began to make itself known. Shoto threw himself forward regardless, determined to prove his point.

When he was close enough, he jumped, knowing that from such a close distance there was no way the other boy could dodge—

Midoriya's eyes narrowed, and Shoto felt a jolt of realization: he had moved at the instant Shoto's foot left the ground.

Glowing lines appeared on bruised and broken skin, and Shoto's eyes widened, but it was already too late—

A fist plowed through his gut, expelling every iota of air from his lungs, and Shoto was sent flying back.

As he tumbled to the ground at full force, unable to do more than attempt to roll and limit the damage to any particular part of his body, Shoto's only consolation was that he had managed to ice one of Midoriya's arms as he was thrown back.

Gritting his teeth on all the questions building on his tongue, Shoto launched himself forward in time with another wave of ice, distantly noting that the power and speed of his attack had noticeably dropped.

He drew closer to Midoriya and threw out ice carelessly, heedless of the way he occasionally got caught in his own quirk. Midoriya matched him quirk for quirk, and they both began to throw out fists and kicks as their stamina levels steadily dropped in unison.

They kept their dodging, floundering attacks until one of Shoto's attacks nearly got through Midoriya's guard.

Shoto watched, eyes flying wide, as Midoriya stuck his thumb—one of his last, unbroken fingers—in his mouth, and activated his quirk with barely a second's hesitation.

The resulting gale threw him back again, and Shoto put another wall at his back, aware that he had maybe one, two tries left before his ice would no longer cooperate with his violently shaking limbs.

"Why are you going this far?" he asked, desperately, as he got to his feet. "This is a _sport,_ not a battle, and you... what are fighting for? Why won't you just let this go?"

Shoto had his reasons—good, important reasons—to win this fight; what was driving Midoriya to such dangerous, unnecessary lengths? Why couldn't he just sit back and admit defeat? Why couldn't he give Shoto this win, and leave the stage with his head held high, knowing that he had at least tried his best?

"Because," Midoriya gasped, his voice laced with the excruciating pain he must be under, "I have expectations I have—that I _want_—to live up to."

The arm that had been broken was purple and oddly lumpy, no doubt from bone shards poking out at different points; but his fingers looked infinitely worse, most of them nearly black, twisted beyond belief and dripping blood at a consistent pace onto the frost-covered ground.

_Why, Midoriya? Why, why, why? _

"Because I want to be able to respond to those expectations with a smile, _every single time_, without fail... and become the coolest hero ever!"

The words rebounded within his mind, knocking against deeply buried memories and hurtling them to the surface.

(_"Shoto…."_)

His moment of inattention cost him. Midoriya got under his guard and punched him in his middle again, sending him skidding back on his feet.

"There's no way for me to know or understand the true extent of your circumstances, nor your resolve. But for you to become Number One without giving it your all, without using the entirety of your quirk, in order to completely reject your father…"

Shoto gagged, and staggered upwards, unable to help the way Midoriya's next words burrowed their way into his mind and sunk their claws in deep:

"When I hear that? All I can think is that you need to stop _fucking around_!"

(_He gagged, and lost his breakfast all over the dojo floor. Tears streamed down his face as he tried to control his heaving, arms moving to cradle the throbbing bruise now marring most of his chest from where Father's fist had made contact._

_"Stand up!" Father barked, and he tried his best, but he couldn't seem to get his breath back, and his legs weren't obeying his commands. _

_"If you're downed by something as simple as this, never mind standing up to All Might, you won't be able to survive a simple villain attack—"_

_"Please, stop!" Mom cried out. She touched his back (gently, always gently) and continued desperately: "He's only five!" _

_"He's _already _five!" His father countered with a roar. Shoto flinched away from the noise, and heaved again. "Get out of my way!" _

Crack. _The by-now-familiar sound of a hand meeting flesh and a cry of pain shocked air back into Shoto's lungs, and he struggled to sit up, weeping eyes fighting to find— _

_"Mom—"_)

Midoriya ran at him, slowly, as if someone had reached out and put the world on hold. Shoto felt frost creeping up to encase his leg, equally as slowly, from outside a world that had narrowed down to a dark point: a point wherein nothing else existed but the familiar sight of his mother, on the ground, motionless.

_...Shut up. _

(_"I don't wanna, Mom," Shoto sobbed into his mother's arms. "I… I…"_

_He clenched his fingers into her shirt, his body shaking with the force of his sobs. _

_"I don't want to be like Dad! I don't want to become someone who bullies you, Mom!"_)

_Shut up. Shut UP. _

(_A hand reached up, smoothed over his hair. _

_"But you want to become a hero, don't you?" she asked kindly, in a voice as sweet and clear as the chiming of bells. _

_Shoto's breath hitched in confusion, and he pushed himself far back enough to look Mom in the face._)

The boundaries of his frozen world widened, then, showing:

Midoriya, right arm cocked, desperation and determination in the lines of his jaw, in the tensing of his eyes—

—Particles of Shoto's ice, floating in the air from the continual back and forth of their quirks—

(_Mom, lips pulled in a sweet, beautiful smile, mouth moving to form the words: "You can be a hero, if that's what you want; if that's the kind of future you feel so strongly about."_)

—Then Midoriya's fist met his middle, and Shoto was, again, sent flying.

(_Shoto looked down from the balcony as he walked, pausing at what he saw:_

_His siblings—Natsuo, Toya, Fuyumi—playing ball together in the courtyard. They were clearly enjoying themselves, Natsuo choosing that moment to break into raucous laughter as Toya tripped over his feet and fell, losing control of the ball. _

_Shoto leaned over the rail, longing pulling at him. What he would give to be able to join them. _

_Seconds later, a strong hand captured his wrist in a punishing grip and pulled him at a speedy, too-fast stride down the smooth wood of the balcony. _

_Shoto, too weak to fight it, let his father pull him away, unable to silence the words shot down at him sternly: _

_"Don't look at them, Shoto. They are from a different world than you."_)

_Shut up. Please, _stop it.

(_"Mother, I'm going crazy…"_

_Shoto stopped at the slightly-opened door to the kitchen, his attention caught. _

_"I can't do it anymore. Every day, the children look more and more like him." _

_Mom stood, her back to him, her phone against her right ear. Steam rose from the kettle boiling on the stove. _

_"Shoto's… that child's left side, sometimes I can't bear to look at it…" _

_The kettle bubbled and gurgled, more than hot enough for a cup of tea, but Mom didn't move to turn off the fire. _

_"I can't raise him anymore. I almost feel like I… like I shouldn't." _

_Shoto gripped the sliding door, unsure of what he was hearing, but positive he didn't like it. He needed to know… he wanted Mom to explain what she was saying. He wanted her to tell him that it was alright, that she was just being silly. _

_He wet his lips, and into the short silence, hesitantly called: "…Mom?" _

_At the sound of his voice, Mom's back went rigid, the arm holding the phone dropping limply to hang at her side. _

_Mom turned to look at him, slowly, so slowly, and when she had faced him fully, he could see that her eyes were wide with terror. _

_The kettle whistled. Shoto took two, three, four steps inside, his mouth open on a question—and his world disappeared into an excruciating spiral of pain._)

_I.… _

The sky was blue, occasionally dotted through with white; the sun shone down, reflecting off flying crystals of ice.

And Shoto was once again sent spiraling.

(_"Good grief, and at such an important stage in your development, too…"_

_Shoto stood, his back to the door. He_ _stared, blankly, at the space in front of him, not acknowledging the words. His entire right eye was covered in bandages, and every time he breathed it throbbed, throbbed, throbbed. _

_"Where's Mom?" he asked flatly. _

_"Hmm? Oh, she injured you, so I had her committed," Father said dismissively, the careless tone of his voice announcing he had washed his hands of the matter, and considered the topic closed. _

_Shoto hunched his shoulders, shuddering on the rage catching in his throat, and snarled, "This is your fault." _

_"What was that? Speak up, boy." _

_Shoto glared through the tears blurring his vision and set his teeth deeply into the resolve building in his heart._

_"You made her like that. _You_ did that. And I hate you, and I won't _ever _forgive you."_)

"As long as I have air to breathe, I will continue to reject..." The words fought to be released, nearly lost in the swell of all the emotion taking up space on his tongue. "..._That man's_ power."

Endeavor's power: that awful, horrific power. Shoto would reject it in its entirety. He would build up a future as the Strongest Hero, without once having to rely on—

"BUT IT'S NOT HIS POWER, IS IT? IT'S _YOURS_, TODOROKI! IT'S YOURS!"

The words punched the breath out of him, and this time, when the bright colors of memory overtook his sight, the emotion that filled Shoto was not one of fear, anger, or dismay:

(**"Yes, it's as you say! Children **_do_** inherit quirks from their parents. The important thing to focus on here, however, is not that connection with the previous generation, but with their flesh and blood, **_your_** own flesh and blood—recognizing yourself, that that power is in you, and a part of you. That is a large part of why I say: **_I Am Here_**."**

_All Might grinned down at Shoto from behind the TV, sending his heart soaring._

**"Do you understand?"**)

(_"But you want to be a hero, don't you? It will be all right, if it's you."_)

Before he knew it, he had forgotten. How could he have forgotten?

(_"You don't have to be caught in a prison of your blood. It's okay for you to become—_)

The scar on his eye tingled, and with the smallest of sparks, heat built, and grew, and continued to grow.

(_—the person you want to be."_)

…Then the world ended in fire. And out of the flames, Shoto felt his world realign, and be reborn anew.

The air itself tasted different. He breathed in, and out, and felt no fear—only the strangest sense of relief, and building gratitude that swelled like the fire billowing up and out, into the air, from his left side.

"Even though you've been fighting so hard to win… damn you."

The frost on his right side began to succumb to the heat, and Shoto felt a burst of energy as his ice settled and reconnected, gathering at the tips of his fingers, ready to be unleashed. The thrill of it was addicting, this feeling of fullness as his right and left sides met and two contradictory sources of nature, rather than erupting, consolidated their power.

"To help out your enemy like this—which one of us is fucking around now?"

He pulled at his flames, trying to control the output, but quickly giving up, upon realizing he couldn't actually bring himself to care.

This feeling… what was it? It burned like the fire of his quirk, but it didn't hurt the way it should. Whatever it was, it pulled at the corners of his mouth, until Shoto couldn't have stopped the fierce grin from transforming his face if he tried.

"SHOTO!" A familiar voice billowed, from somewhere far away.

Shoto could hear the words, distantly, but they never registered in his brain as anything more than noise. Shoto was too caught up reveling in this new revelation, this almost-religious experience of remembering that this power, _his_ power, was not something to be feared.

This power was _his_, and no one—not his father, his mother, his panic or his fear—would ever be able to take it away from him again.

His right eye blurred and leaked a trail of icy water down his face.

_His_ fire, _his_ ice, _his_ quirk. His, and his alone.

The heat dried the tears, clearing his vision, and showed Midoriya's smiling face.

"What are you smiling for?" he rasped. His quirk thrummed with power, demanding to be released, and he had every intention of doing just that.

"With those injuries, in this situation… you're absolutely insane."

Shoto swiped at his face and pulled his tired, battered, exhausted body into a fighting stance.

His abs ached from the repeated strikes; the skin on his left side, unaccustomed to the heat, tingled distractingly, even while it twitched and shuddered with the fire eagerly pushing to be set free.

Everything hurt, but his mind felt truly at peace for the first time in a long, long while, and Shoto couldn't remember ever having felt so alive.

"You only have yourself to blame for what's going to happen next."

Ice exploded out of his right foot and gleefully took off in all directions, throwing gushing clouds of air up to feed his forever-starving flames.

Across from him, Midoriya's left leg took on the characteristics of his quirk, his body bending forwards in preparation. His eyebrows tightly knitted together as he tensed, and his eyes glowed fiercely with the reflection of Shoto's flames.

Shoto's ice grew, and grew, and kept on growing. It filled the full expanse of the stage and crawled its way over into the corners of the arena. Waves grew and fell, shattering to make way for more and more. As Midoriya leapt over the ice, using his quirk to get over the frozen mountain shooting towards him, and lunged, directly at him, Shoto drew his arm back and let heat build, and build, and build.

Midoriya, quirk shining brightly in his one-usable arm, and Shoto, hand glowing white-hot with his quirk, made contact.

_Thank you, Midoriya. _

The world took a deep breath... and detonated.

Typhoon-level winds blew, launching massive chunks of concrete—from Cementoss's unsuccessful attempt to contain the damage—into the air.

Shoto encased himself in ice, long enough to protect himself from the winds and the concrete both, before dropping most of it, knowing he had stayed inside the boundary but needing to know how Midoriya had fared.

Present Mic was complaining about not being able to see, which served to remind Shoto that he had an audience but was otherwise totally unhelpful, if relatable.

As a few remaining billows helped clear the steam, Shoto got a clear view of—

"Mi.. Midoriya is out of bounds!" Midnight announced, stuttering in her shock.

Shoto stared, too exhausted and stunned for words. The entire left side of his uniform had burned away, exposing his skin to the mildly-unpleasant feeling of the ice still at his back.

Midoriya had lost. Shoto had—

_"Todoroki advances to the third round!" _

—won.


	13. A Sense of Purpose

A/N: Introducing: Dadzawa

* * *

"'You're in my way.'"

The words, and the man before him, stopped him in his tracks.

Endeavor stood before him, arms crossed, a triumphant look in his eyes. His blue suit (with its specially commissioned, flame-retardant material) had specific areas where fire was able to pass through, allowing the man to give off the image of someone made of fire.

Shoto stared at him—at the flames around his eyes, his chin, his body—and found that he wasn't intimidated in the slightest. He wasn't even angry. He felt…

"You're not going to say that this time?" Endeavor continued, grinning like it was such a good joke. "You need to control your left side. You're just letting it all out, which is not only dangerous, but wasteful. Still, you have finally abandoned your childish tantrum and become my perfect upgrade! That is something to be praised."

He reached out a hand, giving Shoto a fierce grin that showed all of his teeth. "After you graduate, come work for me, Shoto! I'll lead you down the path of the mighty!"

Shoto looked at the outstretched hand… and felt nothing at all.

"Like I could abandon anything," he murmured, more to himself than the man before him. He brought up his left hand to his face, and stared at it. The world before his eyes focused on that hand, on the veins and flexing tendons, on the lines and wrinkles in the skin. It helped him keep the wavering edges of his vision from sending him floating away at a time when he really couldn't afford it.

(There would be plenty of time, later, to fall apart.)

"The resolve, the promise I've been carrying… they aren't something that can be so easily reversed or broken."

It was true that, while in the arena and faced with the full-force of Midoriya's intent, it had been easy to forget all the reasons he had sworn to never use his left side. But now, in the aftermath (with his right side tingling from overuse, even with help from his left, and his left side beginning to tingle and sting from merely being exposed to air), Shoto found that those reasons were starting to trickle back into his head, bringing with them doubt, fear, and uncertainty.

But back then, in that split-second before the power in his hand—the unstoppable force—had met Midoriya—the immovable object…

"…I forgot about you," Shoto finished the thought aloud. He began walking past Endeavor, leaving the man to his stunned silence with the parting words:

"Whether this is a good thing, an exceptional thing, or a bad thing…"

Shoto looked ahead, his mind beginning to buzz with a multitude of thoughts, the man he left behind already forgotten.

"…I need some time to think about it."

* * *

The time between his match with Midoriya and his next match, against Iida, passed by in a flash, as did the match itself.

Shoto, his internal narrative crushed into little pieces he was still too uncertain and confused to be able to piece back together, fell back on well-learned patterns and attacked Iida with his ice—boxed him in, walls of ice in a cone, the boundary at his back giving him no escape. This proved unsuccessful, as Iida simply used his engine quirk to boost himself up and over it.

The first, nearly invisible kick from how fast it moved, came at his head, and Shoto dodged it; but the next one came on its literal heels so fast he was unable to stop it from hitting him on the back and into the ground at full force.

It had been a good attack, Shoto would give him that. Unfortunately, he had been trained with pain as his dearest and closest friend, and even as he choked on it, his mind taking one, two precious seconds to shake off the disorientation, he didn't let that stop him from icing over the engines on the leg closest to him.

A second later, this move paid off. When Iida grabbed him by the back of his shirt and began to pull him into a run, his engines stalled, from the ice blocking his mufflers, well away from his goal.

"Since I was using only ranged attacks, you forgot that I could pull little tricks like this too, didn't you?" Shoto gasped, his breathing still uneven. Ice shot up Iida's legs, then upwards and onwards, to envelope his torso.

He pulled himself falteringly to his feet, admitting to the fully-frozen Iida that his attempts to be wary of Iida's special move hadn't been quite as successful as he had anticipated, despite his best efforts.

Midnight announced his win, then; the crowd went wild, and Shoto stared down at his left hand as he caught his breath, his thoughts chasing after each other in a dizzy, confusing circle.

* * *

Shoto studied his left hand, eyes tracing each line and indentation, counting the calluses, scars and burn marks.

How long had it been since he had forgotten? He had spent so long repressing every hint of memory, every glimmer of thought related to that time, that he couldn't recall when he'd last consciously chosen to think about it.

(His dreams had never been kind enough to let him forget, but that was different; dreams were the places where horror stories were born, and his mind had never needed actual substance in order to imagine up terrible constructions to torture him with.)

It was as if, at that moment, when he had consciously decided to discard the part of him that had hurt his mother so terribly, he had chosen to hide grief with hate; and in doing so, he had nearly succeeded in erasing his mother's existence from within him entirely.

Perhaps a part of him had hoped to remove only the parts of his mother that had hurt him (and not merely the physical pain, but the emotional one, from knowing how much his mere existence was hurting her); Shoto stared down at his hand, snapshots of his mother flitting through his mind, and knew that in the process, he had managed to cut her away completely.

The revelation hurt, but Shoto refused to shy away from it.

_Mother, I…. _

The thought was never given time to finish.

With a loud, uncompromising bang, the door slammed open. A bright-red sole, attached to a black boot, slowly lowered, revealing the perpetually scowling face of Bakugo Katsuki.

Shoto couldn't even bring himself to be surprised. Of course Bakugo would do something like that—in his mind, surely, knocking was for _other_ people.

"Huh?" came the low exclamation, which quickly turned to an incensed, "why the fuck are you here, this is waiting room thre—wait, no it isn't, this is two? What the fuck, that's so confusing."

Shoto looked at him, acknowledging and dismissing his presence between blinks, then looked back at his hand.

This was, apparently, the wrong move, as the sound of stomping feet immediately headed in his direction.

"I may have got the fucking room wrong, but what's with that damn attitude? We're playing each other next, you fucker!"

He wasn't wrong, but Shoto wasn't sure how that was relevant, so he didn't bother looking up—

"Hey, hey, hey, where the fuck are you looking at, you half-and-half bastard!"

—until a hand rudely inserted itself in his personal space and let off a series of explosions. Shoto leaned his face away, feeling tired, but something about the words the boy had used roused his interest.

"That was what Midoriya said," Shoto mused, the memory coming to him in a flash of realization. He turned his head, giving Bakugo the attention he was demanding to receive.

"That guy, he came at me with all the subtlety of a bullet train and crashed through all the problems I've been carrying. You guys were childhood friends, weren't you? Has he always been that way, getting involved in matters that don't concern him, out of a simple, honest desire to help?"

The thought of those two as friends was still mind-boggling, but Shoto thought that for someone like Midoriya—with that earnestness, that incredible desire to help—even being friends with Bakugo wasn't too impossible to rule out.

Bakugo didn't seem to agree.

"That fucking nerd—"

With a bang, the table in front of him went flying. Shoto's eyebrows rose in mild irritation, because he had been resting his hands there, and that kind of violence was really just, incredibly unnecessary. It wasn't even time for the match yet, and Shoto had actually been busy with other things, thank you.

"—Who cares about him!"

Red eyes glared down at him, something more complicated than pure fury in them, demanding Shoto's full attention.

"I don't give a fuck about what going on with you, or your shitty family problems—"

The words made his eyes narrow, but he wasn't given time to think on it, as Bakugo leaned forward and finished with a menacing hiss:

"—I don't give a flying fuck! Just use your fucking flames on me too! I'll crush them and you both into the damn ground."

He turned away then, finally, and headed to the door.

Shoto looked after him as he passed through the door and his stomping footsteps echoed down the hall, once again contemplative and uncertain.

(That indecision would follow him into his match with Bakugo, where he was presented with the perfect opportunity to use his fire… and instead of releasing his quirk—again letting unstoppable force meet immovable object, to see which one would come out on top—had let his hand, and his quirk, drop, allowing the approaching force to come roaring at him with nothing to meet it but the confused jumble of his thoughts.

And the world faded to black.)

* * *

_Ice. Fire. _

Shoto stood, his back straight, as the stage for the award-giving ceremony rose slowly out of the ground with a quiet rumble—one that did nothing to cover the sounds of an absolutely infuriated Bakugo, who had been chained to a quickly created concrete wall, in an effort to keep him from continuously leaping at Shoto and demanding a rematch.

Shoto had opened his eyes to reality shortly after Recovery Girl walked away from his bed, feeling better from the results of her quirk, but infinitely more exhausted than he could remember feeling in a long, long time. He had known, then, that he had lost; but the loss didn't sting in quite the way it should have.

_Fire, ice. Fire and ice. _

The platform jostled slightly as it clicked into place, and Shoto silently stood under the focused attention of the entire world, his eyes unseeing.

Midnight announced who would be handing out the medals, and the crowd went wild as the larger-than-life silhouette of the Symbol of Peace rose above the stadium walls and flew down to the front of the platform.

He vaguely heard Midnight apologizing to All Might (something about talking over him), and watched with little interested as All Might began the presentation with Crow Boy, who had been given bronze in the unexpected absence of Iida.

(The news bothered him, somehow, as they seemed uncharacteristic of their earnest Representative, and Shoto idly noted it down as something to investigate, later.)

_Fire. Ice. _

Two parts of himself, opposites in all the ways that mattered; he had hoped to keep them that way, separate from both himself and each other, for the rest of his life. If that were to change, if he were to try to bring those parts together... what would become of this confused mess of a person, made up of broken and twisted pieces all cobbled haphazardly together?

If both sides were brought together to form a 'whole', what would become of Todoroki Shoto? If the two parts were connected… would his current existence cease to be?

He tried to put this into words when All Might came to give him his medal, placing the heavy silver sphere around his neck.

"I wanted to become a hero like you," he admitted, the words nearly twisting on his tongue. The medal felt heavy against his chest, and Shoto had the distant thought that this is what Atlas must have felt, with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

There was someone else, who had carried a heavy weight all of these years. It wouldn't do for him to be the only to let this weight go.

"There's something I have to do," he told All Might, meeting his eyes to show him the strength of his resolve.

Then All Might was hugging him.

Shoto's first instinct was to turn his body to stone. Large, looming presences (with their massive bodies, and hands that could dish out pain in endless doses) had taught him to be wary of contact—had taught him how he would feel that contact for a long, long time afterward, and to go to extreme lengths to make it disappear.

But after one, two more seconds of contact, the warmth of both the large body half-engulfing him and the words rumbling in his ear relaxed his body by fractions, until he was able to return the hug in full. All Might hugged him, and Shoto felt a shuddering, shriveled part of him melt like Spring frost as he reveled in the all-encompassing warmth.

(A small, tiny part of him leaned into the contact, and ached—deeply, painfully.

That part of him was small and tiny, with burns and bruises painting a grotesque portrait on his body, and tears streaming down his face as he asked a herculean figure, again and again, _why, why, why_?

But that part of him always had, and always would be, crying for something it couldn't have; so Shoto shut it down harshly, and did his best to enjoy what little he had been allowed, for as long as he could.)

Thus, UA's famous Sports festival came to an end—after a very interesting, and rather uncomfortable, few minutes where All Might had to essentially shove the medal into the viciously protesting Bakugo's mouth. Shoto and his classmates soon found themselves hustled and bustled back into their classroom, to end the day with a note from their homeroom teacher.

"_Ostukare_," their still-bandaged, incredibly done-looking teacher intoned blandly. "So there's no school for the next two days. If you show up here anyway, you'll have no one but yourself to blame… and you'll also look like a total idiot, so don't forget that."

Shoto could admire that sort of doesn't-give-a-shit attitude, especially when he could entirely relate to where it was coming from; if he had to teach this class five days out of the week, he would no doubt have just as few fucks to give by the end of it.

"The pro-heroes will try to catch you as you leave, no doubt, but pay them no mind, other than to turn them down firmly… but politely, Bakugo; no need to shoot yourself in the foot, or bite the hand that will potentially feed you. We'll consolidate everything—the offers and internship details—on our end, and announce the results when you get back. Look forward to that, and rest well."

"Yes, sir!"

"Then get out of here. Also, Todoroki? Stay behind, I need a word with you."

Startled, Shoto met Aizawa-sensei's eyes, and nodded slowly.

That couldn't be good.

He slowly gathered his things, marveling at the way the movement was nearly painless (what he would give to have a healing quirk like Recovery Girl's to use on himself…), and reluctantly headed to the front of the room.

Everyone was hurrying to leave, the usual excitement of a long weekend tempered by unanimous exhaustion, and the room emptied quickly.

Shoto met Midoriya's eyes in passing, and for perhaps the first time since they'd met, nodded his head in acknowledgment. Midoriya looked startled at first, but then a look of delight spread across his face, and he grinned, awkwardly waving a bandaged hand as his friends rushed him out the door.

It was hard to imagine how such a simple gesture could elicit such a contented response, but Shoto noted it down for future reference, regardless. Perhaps this 'friendship' business wasn't as difficult a thing as he had always imagined it would be.

As the last of the students trickled out the door, Shoto hitched his bag over his shoulder and walked to the front of Aizawa-sensei's dark, exhausted, and eager to get… whatever this was, over with.

"You wanted something, Sensei?" he asked tiredly. Talking to adults had never been a comfortable experience for Shoto, but he was tired enough that he was a lot less nervous than he normally would have been.

"Yes," Aizawa-sensei said, voice equally as tired, if not more so. His eyes were still painfully bloodshot, much more than they had been before USJ, and Shoto imagined they must still cause him considerable pain.

"You used your left side today. You've never used it before in school, outside of the tests on the first day, and during battle training with All Might."

It wasn't a question, which gave Shoto no indication of how to proceed.

Giving Sensei a blank look, Shoto's heavy, heavy tongue (and the weight of the world on his shoulders he couldn't wait to let go of) made him uncharacteristically honest when he admitted: "I have no idea what you want from me, Aizawa-sensei, and I don't think I can figure it out. Can you please just tell me what you want me to say, so I can go home?"

The way Sensei's tired eyes blinked at him rapidly told Shoto he had managed to surprise him. Normally, that might have given him a sort of pleasure, as their teacher had such an unflappable air about him, the idea that he could manage such human emotions as surprise seemed nearly ridiculous to imagine.

Today? Today, Shoto waited out the following silence with patience borne of tiredness, giving no thought for anything but what his teacher wanted him to say, so Shoto could say it, fumble his way back to his house, and collapse on his bed to sleep the next two days away.

"Todoroki," Aizawa-sensei said finally, something off about his voice that Shoto couldn't place, "what, in your mind, is the purpose of a teacher?"

Shoto's mind, already growing hazy from fatigue, went completely blank.

What in the world did that mean? Purpose? Teachers?

"…To teach?" Shoto hazarded a guess. Aizawa-sensei shook his head slowly, and Shoto quietly despaired. Bed seemed suddenly a much farther, unattainable thing than it had a few scant minutes ago.

"You're not wrong, but I'm not looking for the obvious answer, kid. Put a bit more thought into it than that."

Not the obvious answer?

All he wanted to do was find a flat surface to lay his head down on, but Shoto ruthlessly pushed away the fog in his thoughts, because his teacher—an adult—had asked him a question, and Shoto had been taught to respect his elders above all else.

He looked out the window, desperate for inspiration. Outside on the grounds, students milled about, most of them heading towards the gates and home. Some of them grouped together, clearly intending to linger, their general excitement and animation visible through waving hands and the distant sound of raised voices.

One particular group (with an individual who kept releasing the occasional burst of bright light and concussive force, giving Shoto a pretty decent guess as to its origin) seemed to be getting a little out of hand; as Shoto watched, someone—a hero, but not one Shoto recognized from the faculty—came over and shooed them away, the hands on their hips the very picture of sternness as they stayed to watch until they had been obeyed.

"…Boundaries and rules are important," Shoto said, slowly, the words flowing to the front of his mind from some distant memory, distorted by time and deliberate negligence but still legible enough to be of use. His tiredness helped lower his usual filters and cautious self-control, and with his mind half on what was occurring outside, Shoto gave little thought to what was actually leaving his mouth. "As children, we are born without an innate sense of self-discipline and control, and when we stray from the correct path or fail to live up to our potential, it falls to the adults—the ones who have learned, and who now know better—to instill that discipline and control."

Invisible ash coated his tongue, and before his eyes, a fire burned, searingly hot and painfully bright. His left side throbbed, and he grabbed at what he could with his right hand, squeezing tight.

"Teachers exist to discover our flaws and to mark the many ways we fall short," Shoto murmured, fingers tracing individual ribs and pressing, squeezing, trying to push the feeling back inside.

Each slow blink of his eyes painted a different picture, of the times in his life where he had been the one to fall short, and had been pulled up, inch by excruciating inch, to meet his goal—whether he had felt capable of doing so or not. The images seared themselves into place as a continuous canvas of pain, blended messily together with the lessons he had learned from (and because of) that pain to make a distorted, unsightly masterpiece.

"They watch, and they remember; and when we are least expecting it, they are then there to beat that knowledge back into us, in whatever shape or form they find necessary, to make it stick."

Distracted by the direction his thoughts had taken, it took Shoto a few minutes to realize that Aizawa-sensei had yet to respond.

He turned away from the window, reluctantly pulling his wandering thoughts back to the present, and began to say, "Sensei—"

The look in Aizawa-sensei's eyes stopped him cold.

It is said that eyes are the windows to the soul, but Shoto had always thought that they were more like a window into your innermost thoughts and emotions; and right now, in Sensei's blood-shot, tired eyes, Shoto saw the full, unrelenting weight of his sharp and focused regard, and felt it shoot through him like a shot of adrenaline.

In Sensei's eyes, Shoto saw a timer begin to tick down on how much longer he would be able to keep his secrets, the ones he desperately needed to keep, to himself.

And Shoto, in a way that he would later stay up half the night regretting, panicked.

"I have to go," he blurted out, eyes wide and breathing picking up against his will. Aizawa-sensei opened his mouth, the bandages around his eyebrows pulling together, but Shoto quickly continued:

"My father will be sending the car around soon, and he doesn't like to wait. Can we please continue this some other time?"

He waited, lungs growing tighter in his chest with each second that passed with Sensei staying silent, staring at him as if he could burrow under his chest and discover his secret with the force of his gaze alone.

Finally, _finally_, Sensei closed his eyes and said, "Fine, then; get out of here. We'll continue this when we get back."

Shoto nearly wilted in place from relief. He nodded rapidly, giving a hurried, "Have a good evening," before quickly turning on his heel.

Before he could slide the tall door closed, the sound of his name stopped him in his tracks.

"But Todoroki? Don't think I'm letting this go, just because I'm willing to wait. Be here after school on Tuesday, and don't even think of trying to skip."

The ominous words followed him out the door, to the gates (where the car was indeed waiting, to Shoto's surprise), and all the way back to his house, and only lost the weight of their promise as his body relaxed in sleep.

In his dreams, there was fire, as there always was; and glittering dark eyes, silently watching him burn.


	14. Teach Your Children Well

A/N: A DADZAWA HAS BEEN SPOTTED IN HIS NATIVE HABITAT. LOOK AT HIM NURTURING HIS CHILD!

* * *

Tuesday morning dawned bright and clear.

Shoto slapped his palm down on his vibrating phone, once, then twice, when it continued vibrating and letting off its obnoxious chiming.

Twenty-seconds, counted down, to let himself accept that morning had come, and there was nothing he could do about it; flip the blankets; face-teeth-toilet-mirror check; throw on sweat pants and t-shirt; and Shoto was out the door.

The sun rose early now that the cold had passed, and Shoto did his warm-up stretches while the dim light of dawn filtered through the thick curtains of maple, peach, plum and cherry tree leaves, all lined up in neat little rows around the property.

Shoto checked his phone as he popped in his earbuds and kicked one sneakered-shoe against the ground: 5:10 AM. He had until 6:30 AM to run, shower, eat and dress before the driver would be bowing him into the backseat of the car, so if he calculated thirty-minutes for all the morning necessities, that left him forty-minutes to run 5km.

Plenty of time. Shoto stretched one last time, fought down a yawn, and headed out the side-gate. The door opened before he could so much as touch it, and he looked up at the security camera pointed at his face and gave a perfunctory nod. Then he settled into a light jog, classical piano solos streaming peacefully into his ears, and headed down towards the river.

Today's route (staggered throughout the month so as to avoid being predictable, for security reasons) took him straight down by the river and along the cycling path. If he asked nicely, and did 'well' during training for the week, Father could usually be persuaded to let him jog around the neighborhood, though he was almost always required to bring supervision. If he had behaved throughout the week and picked a good time to request this particular run by the river, Father would usually say yes, and would even let him go without a bodyguard.

Today was… not one of those days.

Shoto listened to Tchaikovsky and very carefully didn't look at the man a few meters behind him—the man who was keeping pace with him on a bicycle, and who was _very subtly_ tapping on his earpiece and whispering into his wrist every five minutes.

_So_ subtle. No, really, so very subtle.

The sun was beginning to set the sky ablaze with golden light, and Shoto looked down to avoid the glare, telling himself that, really, he'd practically asked for this.

If he'd just done as Father had wanted, as Endeavor had wanted, he might be running through back-alleys right now, jumping over fences and walls and casually losing his shadow half-way through (they usually 'let' him, if Father was in a good mood that day). If he'd just used his fire against Bakugo, if he hadn't let his hand drop… he could have won the Sports Festival, no questions asked. He would have taken the first step in the incredibly detailed and regimented future the Number Two Hero had planned for him... and wouldn't be here, running at five-thirty in the morning, with a bodyguard behind him and another one up the road watching his every move.

A very earnestly fast-walking lady passed him by going in the opposite direction, her middle-aged face set in stern lines of concentration, and Shoto dropped down to fiddle with his shoelace until she had passed. The near-silent screech of brakes a little ways behind him made him roll his eyes, annoyed. The whole point of leaving the house to jog was to have a little bit of freaking privacy, but that obviously wasn't going to be possible so long as Father was keeping him on such a tight leash. He could easily have completed his running quota on the treadmill instead, if this was the alternative.

Shoto watched a car that had been 'inconspicuously' following him since the house turn on its blinkers and settle in to wait, and scowled darkly, completely fed up.

This was ridiculous. He was better off going to school early and getting permission to use one of the training facilities…

Shoto slowly stood, his mind planning and discarding ways to phrase the question in a hundred different scenarios, his mood—which had been ready to plummet—suddenly jumping up three levels higher.

Now _there_ was an idea.

For now, Shoto figured he might as well put the bodyguards (and their very large salaries) to good use. He skipped his way over to the fence that separated the running path from the road, and jumped over said-fence. As he jumped, he heard a curse behind him, and smirked as he wondered how the guards were going to explain this little mess.

(He immediately felt bad afterwards, and shouted over the fence that he was just planning to hitch a ride back to the estate. Being angry was one thing; taking out your anger on someone who hadn't done anything to deserve it was just plain unheroic.)

* * *

Shower-clothes-food later, and Shoto was handing his extra tray to Saito-san and preparing to leave.

(When Father had him on a tight leash, easy morning breakfasts of Fuck You milk-less cereal disappeared with alacrity.)

He waved goodbye to Fuyumi, closed the door on Father's, "If you have any desire to go running at all tomorrow, Shoto, I suggest you—" and slipped into his shoes and out the door.

The car ride he spent dozing, his late night and subsequent nightmares giving him less than two or three solid hours of sleep; the nightmares he hadn't been able to help, but thoughts of his visit to see his mother, and the coming conversation that he had been dreading for the whole two days, had swirled about his head, making even the thought of sleep impossible.

Visiting Mom had been...

_"Fuyu-nee?" Shoto called quietly, tapping on the open door to her room. Fuyumi looked up, blinking at him from behind her reading glasses._

_"Yes, Shoto? Do you need something?"_

_"I was wondering…" Shoto trailed off, not sure how to word what he wanted to say or even if he wanted to say them at all. He clenched his hands into fists, his feet poised to leave, and something in Fuyumi's face softened. _

_She slipped a bookmark into her page and closed her book, turning her spinning chair to face him and give him her full attention. "Whatever you want or need, just ask, and I'll do my best to help you, if I can."_

_Shoto chewed on his lip, then breathed deeply, and decided. "Can you tell me the address to the… hospital? I… would like to. Go. Today, if I can."_

_Hey eyes had slowly widened throughout his speech, and by the end of the sentence, they were as wide as saucers; but to her credit, she only nodded slowly, eyes still wide, and gave him the address without further question._

_Some days, Shoto loved his sister so strongly and fiercely it took his breath away._

_A half-an-hour later saw Shoto, slowly making his way down familiar and increasingly unfamiliar streets, his mind playing old reels of memory on a constant, unceasing loop:_

_Down that street, Mom held his hand and sang rhymes with him as they traced pavement lines with their feet; there, at that corner, Mom crouched down with him under an umbrella, and used her raincoat to cover a soaking wet puppy in a cardboard box; right here, a car had swerved dangerously close as they walked, and Shoto had herded Mom safely against the wall, feeling proud when she praised his strength and courage, after; here, Shoto tripped while running and skinned his knee, so together with Toya-nii and Natsu-nii, Mom cast a special magic that made all the ouchies go away. _

_Shoto traced these memories with his eyes until the pictures playing in his mind no longer matched his surroundings, and then the old memories rewound, and started all over again, this time with a few special additions he had been attempting to ignore. _

"I can't take it any more… Every day, the children to grow to look more like him. That boy, Shoto… that child's left side, sometimes I just can't bear to look at it…"

_Through familiar streets then unfamiliar ones, a train ride and another walk, Shoto walked and walked and walked, until suddenly, he had no more time to waver._

_A large building had come into sight. A slow stream of people and cars moved out of it, but very few moved to go in. Shoto stared up at the front of it, rocking back and forth on his heels before the opened gates, and wondered._

_He hadn't been to see her, since the accident; his anger at Endeavor (and his fear at what the man would do if he found Shoto visiting Mom) had played a large part in keeping him away. The other part—the one that even now quailed at the thought of stepping through those doors—feared that she would take one look at his face, and the screaming would start… but this time, it wouldn't be Shoto who was screaming._

_He hadn't wanted to force her to acknowledge the existence of something that caused her so much pain, so he had stayed away. But Shoto took a moment, right there, to close his eyes and remember why he had come all this way. He closed his eyes, and he pictured it:_

_He would enter the room. Mom would be there, waiting for him. They would sit, and hold hands like they used to, and talk. _

_Shoto would say: _It's just me, mom. You don't have to be scared, because my quirk belongs to me, and I would rather die than hurt you with it. I am not him. I'm sorry if I made you sad, and I'm sorry if I scared you. Do you forgive me?

_And Mom would say: _I'm sorry I hurt you, too. And I forgive you.

_Shoto would say: _I'm going to become a hero_._

_And she would say: _I know you will.

_And they would hold hands, and talk about puppies in the rain; and about All Might, about UA, and about friends and fire and ice and wishing on rainbows; and everything would be just like it used to. Together, they would cast off the heavy yolk about their necks, engraved with the name 'Endeavor', and they would destroy it into such tiny little pieces that those pieces would pass entirely from memory itself. _

_Shoto walked through the gate, as quickly as he could; through reception, up staircases and through an elevator that required the passkey on his visitor's badge; through a hall, around a corner, past a group of orderlies on break. _

_Then, he stood before a door. _

_He looked at the sign beside the door. It read, simply, "Todoroki". An innocuous name on an unremarkable, standard hospital door. To Shoto, it seemed like an iron gate had been slammed over it, keeping the handle of the door miles and miles out of reach._

_He shook the feeling off and reached a hand out anyway, slowly sliding it open._

_In the light of the fading afternoon sun, Shoto saw: _

_Long white hair, blowing gently in the breeze from the open window. A hospital bed, and sitting on it, a thin, emaciated form in a plain hospital gown. A face, half-turned towards him, turning completely at the sound of the door opening. Gray eyes, widening as they took in what they were seeing._

_"Hey, Mom," Shoto said quietly, into the breathless silence of the room. "Been a while."_

_A smile, brighter than the rays of the setting sun shining across her folded hands, slowly turned up the corners of her mouth.)_

Visiting Mom had been good. Hard. Incredible.

Shoto ran his finger up and down the safety-belt idly, his eyes half shut, but his mind's eye captured in that perfect moment that he wished could have lasted forever.

It had been hard, but it had been worth it, and Shoto couldn't wait to do it again.

He stayed there, peacefully floating, until the car rolled into UA's carpark and the engine shuddered to a stop.

The driver opened the door for him, and Shoto kept his mouth shut, mindful of the way he had caused enough trouble for the staff for one day, and raised a hand in farewell as he was bowed on his way.

The last fleeting memories of peace fled half-way to the 1-A classrooms, and Shoto had to stop before the large doors and take a deep breath, reminding himself that Sensei just wanted to talk and it wasn't like he was going to walk into an interrogation… and besides, Sensei had said after school, so getting all worked up about it now was rather pointless, wasn't it? Right. Yes.

So Shoto opened the door on the first day back from the Sports Festival, and navigated his way to his desk at the back of the room. His classmates greeted him as he put his things away, and he exchanged quiet small talk about his weekend with Tokoyami (_"Please call me Tokoyami. Dark Shadow finds you very interesting," Crow Boy said, still and solemn in a way Shoto found himself instantly liking_) as they waited for the bell to ring. Sensei arrived, Iida called them all to stand for the morning greetings, and Shoto sat back down to listen to the homeroom announcements for the day.

It was a beautiful Tuesday morning, and Shoto couldn't wait for it to be over and done with.

* * *

Shoto blinked, and Midnight-sensei was there, helping them choose their Hero Names (_"'Shoto'?" she read off of his dry-erase board, sticking her hip out and leaning forward to squint at it. "You sure about that?" Shoto nodded mechanically, his mind's eye already occupied with dreading the fast-approaching future, and Midnight-sensei shrugged easily. "Fair enough. All right, who's up next—"_). Blink, and it was English with Mic-sensei. Blink, Math. Blink, Lunch, blink, Hero Training, blink, and the bell was ringing. When Sensei called him up to his desk, his classmates all moving smoothly around him on their way out the door, Shoto felt that no time had passed at all.

"Sit," Sensei told him. "I'll be with you in a minute."

Shoto pulled out the chair nearest to Sensei's desk (whose was this again? Hagakure's?) and sat down carefully.

The weather was in that strange in-between of summer and spring: too cold for air conditioning, but too hot to simply shut themselves into a room with no circulating air. The windows had been slung open as a compromise, and the afternoon light lit the dancing dust particles in sections, cut up by the shadows cast by window frames and closed shutters, across the entirety of the left-hand side of the classroom. Shoto caught snatches of voices, laughter and running feet from students on their way out of the large UA gates, and rather spitefully hoped someone tripped and fell on their face.

Maybe then, he would have someone to share his annoyance and repressed anxiety with; because no matter how earnestly he had wished it, this scheduled appointment had still arrived after hours of lessons that had passed by in the blink of an eye.

There was a rustling on Sensei's desk as he sorted and checked through a few papers, and Shoto waited with barely-contained restlessness for him to finish. Finally, he placed the papers into a folder with a snap that had a sort of finality to it, and Shoto's stomach sank as Aizawa-sensei placed it neatly on his desk and looked up at him.

It was time, then.

"So," Sensei began, "where did we leave off our last conversation?"

No, 'how was your weekend', or, 'how have you been settling in?'. Shoto appreciated the part of Sensei that abhorred wasting his breath, even as he resented it in this current instance, because he had been hoping to have some time to gather his thoughts.

Of course, not-answering wasn't an acceptable response, and he had been thinking about this particular one long enough that the answer came easily: "You asked me about the purpose of teachers."

"I did. And you gave me an answer." Was that a statement of fact, or a prompt to tell him what he had said? Shoto cautiously scanned his teacher's unreadable face, and took a stab at the right answer.

"I... said. That. Teachers are there to help us learn self-discipline and. Ensure that we... we don't fall short of our goals?" He finished with a question, hoping Sensei would pick up the rest of the sentence, but only received the same unreadable look and an encouraging nod in reply.

Conversations with this man were proving to be a lot like pulling teeth. Shoto wracked his brain a little desperately, wondering what exactly Sensei was looking for, and clenched his jaw when he failed to find it. He jiggled his left leg a little under the table, restless, and after another minute, he gave up.

It was the end of the school day, the rest of his classmates had left (though again, Midoriya had lingered, giving him a questioning look, but at his nod, had simply waved and closed the door behind him), and even though he didn't have the end of the Sports Festival as an excuse, Shoto was... tired. He was really just... so tired.

"I don't know what you want from me, Aizawa-sensei," Shoto said—in a way that gave him a deja-vu of their last talk—with careful blankness. He placed his right hand on top of the desk and pressed hard into it, until the tips of his fingers turned white. He imagined covering it in a thin layer of ice, slowly, like the layers of a powdery snowfall; he imagined his hand, then the desk, then the rest of him being covered in layer upon layer upon layer; until the only thing left was a misshapen, unremarkable glacier, with no sign that he had ever been there at all.

"I told you my understanding of a teacher's function, as well as my personal beliefs as to their purpose. I tried my best to..." Shoto ran his tongue over the lines of his teeth, then gently hit down, hoping to impress into his unhelpful tongue some useful insights into how to impart what he needed to say. "I don't know what you want me to tell you."

A sudden, loud exhalation of breath made Shoto tilt his head at Sensei, wondering what had prompted it. A few seconds later, he was rewarded when Sensei admitted, "You know, maybe I'm not being fair." Shoto lifted his head, surprised, thinking that that was a phrase he couldn't remember passing an adult's lips in his presence before. "I think I've been working under the assumption that you have at least some idea of—well, no, never mind that. Like you said yourself, a teacher's function is to teach; I want to lead you to the answer, not tell it to you straight out, do you understand?" Shoto nodded, because that did make sense, even if he found it a little hard. "That being said, I don't think I've been simplifying things enough, for which I apologize. Let me ask you a few questions, then, and together we'll work to find the answer. I need you to look at me while we talk about this, Todoroki, so I can see that you understand."

An apology and being told he was right, in one day. Shoto sat straighter, his shoulders going back and his hands falling into his lap as he made deliberate eye contact with the man who had, so far, not once failed to show Shoto respect as a person; the least Shoto could do would be to respond in kind. Aizawa-sensei nodded approvingly, then surprised Shoto by getting out of his chair and moving to the front of his larger desk, where he proceeded to lean his weight against the edge, his hands going to brace himself at his sides.

Blinking up at him, Shoto stilled his limbs against the desire to lean back, and sat straighter still.

If Sensei felt the need to add physical closeness to emphasize the gravity of whatever he was going to say, then Shoto would do his best to listen and understand.

"You said a teacher exists to instill boundaries, rules, and discipline," Sensei told him, dark eyes quiet and solemn, "and to, quote: 'Beat that knowledge back into us, in whatever shape or form they find necessary to make it stick.'"

Shoto swallowed and felt eye-contact, already difficult, become that much harder. Had he actually said that? To his pro-hero homeroom teacher? Anxiety began to creep up the back of his neck. No wonder Sensei was taking this so seriously; even tired and spaced-out, Shoto should have known better than to say something so dangerous—even if it was, essentially, true, in all the ways that mattered.

"You weren't wrong, not entirely," he said evenly, and Shoto's eyebrows rose.

...He wasn't?

"We are here to instill boundaries, and impose rules and discipline where necessary, yes; but now I'm going to ask you something related to that, all right? Okay. If I were to draw a line in the sand and say: Cross over this, and you'll be in trouble—what reason do you think I would have for saying that?"

This wasn't a set-up for a vicious smack-down. Shoto told himself this, and replied hesitantly: "So I know… what not to do?"

Sensei nodded, and Shoto's shoulders dropped a fraction. "Good, yes. And knowing what you _can_ do, how far you can go before you'll be in trouble, how does that make you feel?"

This stopped him short. How… did it make him feel?

"I…"

When he hesitated for too long, Sensei tilted his head and encouraged, "Compare an experience you've had where you didn't know what the boundaries were, and tell me how the two events felt different."

Hundreds of different events popped up into his mind, all at once, and Shoto let his eyes drift to the window, unseeing this time, as he attempted to sort through them:

_Father, becoming angry at him for speaking too loudly and forbidding him from eating with his siblings. Endeavor, furious that he didn't complete the homework he didn't have due for another week, and subsequently taking it out on him at training. Endeavor, flying into a rage because Shoto didn't memorize the offensive takedown he had supposedly been told he needed to learn—_

_Sensei, telling them every time, without fail, what he expected of them, and what the consequences would be if they failed; Sensei, with his tendency to erase harsh punishments with the excuse of a logical ruse, but who never turned around and issued more punishment than he had threatened._

It was like a lightbulb turning on in his head. Shoto turned his head towards Sensei, meeting his eyes with his own round ones, and the words nearly burst off his tongue in his surprise. "I didn't feel safe! I… that is, what I mean is, that I didn't feel safe when I didn't know what I was being punished for, or what I might potentially be punished for."

"So part of the purpose of rules and boundaries is…?" Sensei prompted patiently, his arms folding over his chest as he looked at Shoto, quietly observing.

"To—oh." The words fell off of lips numbed by the overwhelming realization that had come with all the pieces falling together at last, and Shoto felt his mouth stay hanging open after he had said them. Suddenly feeling incredibly vulnerable, he snapped his mouth shut and couldn't resist putting a hand over his eyes, as if he could erase the strangely humiliating understanding in his teacher's face.

"…To make me feel safe," Shoto finished in a whisper, and squeezed his eyes tightly shut behind his hand.

"To make you feel safe," he heard Sensei respond quietly. "You're a bright kid, Todoroki, and I knew you only needed a little help to make it to this point. So I'm going to ask you again, and I want you to answer me this time:

"What, in your mind, is the purpose of a teacher?"

Shoto thought about teachers, and thought about why someone might want to make another person safe; he thought about love, and family, and siblings and parents and friends, and the children who would grow up to be and have all of those things. Then he dropped his hand from his eyes (blinking at the sudden change in lighting) and looked at his own teacher.

"A teacher's purpose is to teach, and to help create a learning environment where their pupils feel… safe," he added at the end, rather lamely, but the rest he had said with as much certainty as he could muster. Something… inarticulable, traveled from the tips of his toes up through the roots of his hair, giving him goosebumps all along his arms.

Sensei gave him a firm nod in answer, and Shoto relaxed back into his seat, incredibly relieved to have gotten it right.

"One last question, then we're done, all right?"

They weren't finished? Slightly dismayed, Shoto nodded determinedly anyway, and looked up at Sensei from behind the safety of his red and white bangs.

After a pause to make sure he had Shoto's full attention, Aizawa-sensei said, each word slow and deliberate: "If part of a teacher's purpose is to make you feel safe, then when I ask you questions— about things like your life, you quirk, or even just about you…" he paused, and ducked his head down slightly to fully meet Shoto's eyes as he finished, "…what do you think I'm doing that for?"

…Oh.

The goosebumps came again, bringing with them a full-body shudder he couldn't have hidden if he'd tried.

"So that you can… help." Shoto looked at Sensei with wide, helpless eyes after he had said it, feeling he must have gotten it right (Sensei had dropped more than a handful of hints, after all) but desperately needing some sort of affirmation—

A warm hand dropped on his head, and all the thoughts within it scattered instantly.

"Good work, kid, you did real good," Aizawa-sensei said, unmistakable warmth in his voice, and smiled. It made his normally dull, cold eyes flush with color and life, and Shoto felt his breath catch to feel the full force of it. Sensei patted Shoto's hair, once, then twice, before he dropped his hands back to rest against the lip of his desk. His throat becoming strangely thick, Shoto dropped his eyes and did his best to swallow it down, relieved that Sensei was pleased with him and glad that he had gotten it right.

"I'm here to help, kid, and if there ever, _ever_ comes a time when you need help, now you know that you can come to me, or All Might, or Ectoplasm, or Present Mic or any of your teachers, and they will help you because…?"

"Because that's their job," Shoto answered instantly. "Because that's a large part of what being a teacher is about."

Sensei stood up, and taking it for the signal that they had finished, Shoto stood as well, and hitched his bag over his shoulder. But before he could bow and say his goodbyes, Sensei's hand caught his shoulder.

(He had a large hand: Shoto could feel it, could feel the heat sinking down from Sensei's large palm on his shoulder and the fingers that nearly touched his shoulder blade, and was amazed to realize that they didn't feel like burning.)

"There are other reasons than that, kid, but those reasons I want you to think about on your own. If you feel you've found the answer, come to me, any time. You got it?"

The words sank into his chest, and lingered like the weight of a comforting blanket. Shoto nodded up at his bandaged, perpetually tired or angry, bedraggled teacher, and felt more at peace than he could remember being around another adult in a long, long time.

"Get out of here then, kid, and get home safe."

And Shoto went.


	15. Pride Comes Before the Fall

A/N: I accodentally posted chapters 11 and 12 in the wrong order, oops. Big thanks to fencer29 for pointing that out to me!

Warning: Endeavor being his charming self, and Stain.

* * *

Aizawa-sensei stood in front of them, arms crossed, at his most unyielding and stern. His eyes seemed to bore into each of them individually, as if he could physically impress upon them the seriousness of the words he was speaking through the power of his gaze alone. Even with his mind only half on the proceeding lecture about the importance of the coming internships, the split-second of eye-contact Shoto had with Sensei, in passing, was enough to send a shiver down his spine. The effect Sensei's focus had on him was a curious thing, when he considered the long years he had spent bearing—and slowly becoming immune to—the weight of a similar gaze day in, day out; it said a lot about the man's incredible presence that he could effect Shoto at all.

Aizawa-sensei had been born to either teach, work at a high-security prison, or be an incredibly dangerous criminal, and Shoto mentally gave a prayer of thanks to the sleeping bones of all past-heroes everywhere that Sensei had chosen to teach.

Sensei could be strict, demanding, and occasionally harsh… but Shoto was beginning to see that he could also be fair and patient—and gentle, when he wanted to be. Even the little Shoto had experienced for far of UA's teaching methods in general was such a contrast to what he was used to: learning brought on by fear, aggression, and pain.

There was teaching, and then there was _teaching_: some days, Shoto thought that where the line blurred between the two was similar to the way Villain and Hero could seem strangely not-mutually exclusive; every day, Shoto felt he could never be grateful enough that their homeroom teacher's method seemed to fall more often than not on the latter.

('I'm here to help, kid.' Sensei had said, and Shoto believed him.)

"Ashido, don't draw out your 'yes's! You come off as sloppy and rude, and that's the worst first impression to be making!" Sensei snapped, the change in tone drawing Shoto's full attention back to the present.

Pinky wilted under the scold, and pouted out a muttered: "Yes sir."

Sensei eyed them all tiredly, looking understandably fed up, and probably secretly ecstatic to be rid of them. "Get on your trains, then, and get the most out of these next few days that you can," he finished, giving them all one last, focused look, and a nod. "And for god's sake, don't lose your damn tickets, I'm not going to pick up any of you at some random station because you were too lazy to keep track of your things."

His own ticket tucked carefully in his inside pocket, Shoto looked through his bangs at Aizawa-sensei, and thought: _You would, though, wouldn't you? You would come and get any of us, anywhere, if we really needed it. _

The thought was a pleasant one. As they all dispersed, Shoto watched as Midoriya and Uraraka ran after Iida, stopping for a moment to exchange a short conversation; then Iida was nodding goodbye, and turning to leave. Shoto watched his departing back, throat caught on the words he wanted to say (and couldn't, because how could he? Words were impossible, confusing things that always got mixed up and stuck together in the wrong places, just when he needed them most). He watched him walk away, and didn't call out to him, like he desperately wanted to; instead, he let himself cling to the knowledge that when Sensei said he wouldn't come for them, he had lied. For now, that would have to be enough.

Then they all dispersed, and Shoto was heading to the city to Endeavor's Pro-Hero Agency to complete his internship.

* * *

By the time the train pulled into the station with the high-hiss of the pressure release on the breaks, Shoto was incredibly relieved that the ride was over. He stepped through the small waiting area between cars, a careful half-meter of space between him and Endeavor, and together with Endeavor's personal assistant (a short, mousy looking man with glasses and a placid demeanor), they stepped off the train and onto the platform.

Getting out of Tokyo station and into the car that had been waiting for their arrival was a relatively smooth process. Shoto only had to withhold two, maybe three eye-rolls as Endeavor was stopped by avid groups of fans, and managed, with varying success, to hide behind the dutiful form of the mousy aide, who was kind enough to provide a barrier between Shoto and the incredibly crowded station. The train ride had thankfully been short enough that aside from some ogling, there hadn't been anyone brave enough to approach. The one time Shoto thought he'd spotted a potential fan, it had luckily coincided with the approach of the refreshments cart, and he had made a show of carefully selecting his drinks and snacks so as to make it too awkward to approach. The potential fan had given up shortly after, which had been well worth the low lecture on unnecessary sugar and empty carbs from Endeavor, which Shoto had subsequently done his best to tune out as he munched on strawberry-chocolate _Toppogi_ and drank grape Fanta.

(Which he'd then had to excuse himself to get rid of, shortly after, when they started trying to crawl back up and out of his mouth. Sometimes, getting on Endeavor's nerves was it's own reward—but other times, it really, really wasn't.)

Once they had escaped the flashing of cameras and the nauseating calls of, 'Thanks for your hard work, hero!', the assistant quickly ushered them into the awaiting car. From there, it was a one-hour or so ride to the central Hero Agency in Hosu, where Endeavor had arranged for them to set up their 'base of operations', so to speak.

It was fully dark by the time they had finished with the necessary talks and paperwork. Shoto was already feeling fatigued by this time, which was a strange thing, as he hadn't done more than travel. It had been his first time on a _shinkansen_, outside of the ride to his father's agency in Hamamatsu—which, in hindsight, had actually been a complete waste of time, as Shizuoka station (where they had all met up, and Aizawa-sensei then had seen them on their way) was on the way to Tokyo, and in the opposite direction of Hamamatsu. If Endeavor had simply made Shoto wait in Shizuoka station, they could have gone together from there, saving Shoto the unnecessary travel time.

To be fair, having experienced the bullet train with Endeavor vs. not with him, Shoto could say with great certainty he had much preferred the former, so it hadn't been a total waste of time. All that being said…

Shoto shot Endeavor—who was taking up an unnecessary amount of space with his gigantic Ego, in an otherwise rather empty reception room—a nasty look, and stalked off to grab something to eat from the vending machines before they left.

_What_ a dick.

Patrol began quietly enough. Shoto strolled after Endeavor, doing his best to shake off every hint of resentment that threatened to flare as they walked. He was here to learn, on his own terms; partly as a way to show Endeavor—to show Father—that he was capable of putting aside personal feelings in favor of a common goal (an important part of being a hero), and partly to remind himself that fire could also be utilized to help people, even when being wielded by someone as morally corrupt as his sire.

"When patrolling, it is important to remember," Endeavor rumbled, "to keep yourself aware of your surroundings."

_No kidding_, Shoto thought snidely, then quickly shook that thought away as unhelpful, and did his best to open his ears.

"In any metropolis, there will be a significant percentage of the criminal element, even in an area of the city that is teeming with regular people—businessmen, families, schoolchildren. Whether that element shows its face in the form of a pickpocket, a sexual predator, or a dangerous killer, you must always remember that appearances mean nothing: the villain who stabs a pregnant mother between one moment and the next, could just as easily be the middle-aged man over there—" Endeavor gestured to a rumpled, weary-looking man lingering in front of a corner store, cigarette hanging from his mouth, "—or that teenager girl over there, as it could be an obvious villain."

The teenaged girl in question had on an incredibly short plaid-skirt and a low-cut shirt that showed about three-quarters of her lacy purple bra. She also had incredibly tacky highlights, even tackier gem-studded nails half-again as long as Shoto's, and a massive cellphone that she could barely hold with one hand as she posed provocatively for a selfie.

Shoto cataloged all these details about her with a frown. He supposed he could see the logic in what the pro-hero was saying, that anyone could be a villain, no matter how innocent they first appeared; still, it was difficult to imagine this civilian, in particular, hiding anything like a knife on her person, because first of all, where would she even hide it? Under her skirt? …What skirt? That glorified-handkerchief barely passed as an item of clothing. Shoto pursed his lips in disapproval, giving the area a quick sweep of his eyes, and glared at a group of teenage boys who had stopped to admire the view.

But Endeavor was already strolling past before he could confront them, so Shoto dismissed the thought from his mind and hurried to catch up.

"You must also be sure to keep your eyes on the less occupied areas, such as the backroads, or the drinking streets that become crowded around this hour. As the night wears on, the men and women who have spent their day stressing to accomplish their work, in whatever form that might take, will use this time to de-stress—be that with alcohol, company, or food. In the case of the first two, when they mix, there opens the possibility of someone deciding that all the permission they need to take the latter, by force, is the courage of the first."

(_He could smell the alcohol on his breath. _

_Father had hit him. _Father_ had… hit him._)

As they passed a laughing group of mixed college-age students, already looking well on their way to drunk, Shoto breathed carefully through his nose and slid past them, passing by completely unnoticed, where Endeavor warranted a few double-takes and a surprised, "Was that—".

_That_ had been… different. Todoroki Enji, in his capacity as Shoto's 'Father', had never hit him before that day, and hadn't since. The Pro-hero Endeavor did many, many things in the name of training (and would doubtless do so again, for as long as he deemed it necessary), but Father had always kept himself above such acts. Most likely, in his inebriated state, his mind had associated the sight of Shoto with the activity where they saw each other the most—training—which caused him to slip into the mindset where raising a hand to Shoto, in order to 'prepare him for the future', was the rule, rather than the exception.

…So that wasn't—so it wasn't the same thing. Father wasn't like that. Endeavor, yes, always; but Father was… different.

Shoto overcompensated in his attempt to fight down the desire to fall further behind the hero (who was currently taking up a large majority of the sidewalk, leading to a lot of terrified looks that quickly transformed into awe) and ended up walking nearly beside him. Stuck, as falling back would appear cowardly and odd now that he had entered Endeavor's line of sight, Shoto told himself to suck it up. He put gentle pressure on the side closest to the Fire Hero's glowing quirk, as if with that pressure, he could avoid any kind of physical contact.

"Never be afraid to step into a suspect situation," Endeavor continued to lecture, oblivious to the changes Shoto's body language had gone through in the past thirty-seconds. He continued to prowl down the sidewalks and across streets as if he owned them, content in his superiority and power.

The glowing lights of the city welcomed them into her midst, and Shoto looked at all the people, going about their evening in happiness, sadness, tiredness or apathy, and wondered which of the faces hid a different side to them—a side that would turn the ones around them shocked and horrified if it should ever see the light of day.

"If you hear a cry, go to it! Even if you arrive to discover that had someone dropped their phone, or was surprised by a friend, or heard some terrible news. There is no room for embarrassment in the work of a hero, and you should always strive to be the type of hero to whom the words, 'Too Little, Too Late' never cross your lips!"

They passed a multi-storied Bic Camera, and in the entranceway were a number of various sized television screens; as the crowd parted before them, Shoto happened to glance at one of the smaller tv screens, and slowed to a stop at what he saw.

'**Hero Killer Stain, At Large After Gravely Injuring Pro-Hero Ingenium!**' the heading read, in bold, unmistakable letters. Shoto watched as the scene of the incident was broadcast, watched the police cars and long stretches of yellow crime scene tape, watched the dark alley where someone's precious older brother had nearly lost his life... and felt his throat ache.

_Iida_.

If only he could have found the words to tell him: _I understand. _Because Shoto understood in a way that many of Iida's well-wishes couldn't. Most of them probably didn't have siblings, or if they did, theirs were alive and well. They didn't know, and hopefully never would know, the pain of losing a brother, a sibling, of knowing that something indescribably precious had been taking away from them and that they would never be getting it back.

Iida's brother was still alive, the last Shoto had heard, but even so, the possibility had been there. If someone hadn't happened to come across his fallen form, if someone hadn't called the authorities in time, if, if, if.

Shoto wished he could have told Iida: _I understand, but _you_ don't. _

Iida didn't understand, because he could have lost his brother, but he _hadn't_; that thought was no doubt the farthest thing from his mind right now, when it should be all that he could think about. Shoto understood that the pain, the fury and wanting vengeance had given him tunnel vision, but Iida still had something left and if he continued forwards on this path of vengeance and anger, forgetting the things that were actually important, he would end up with only regret to show for it.

_Nii-san_.

The ache spread, and Shoto turned his head away from the pictures now covering all of the screens, willing himself to put all those distractions out of his mind and focus on his current objective.

Endeavor had nearly reached the end of the street by this point, and Shoto picked up his pace before the Hero could notice and call out to him. This time, when he had closed the distance, Shoto stopped well short of the man, barely within earshot.

"—of course, cooperation between Hero Agencies is essential to a successful capture," Endeavor was saying, still oblivious, to both Shoto and the civilians doing their best not to get hit by his massive, waving hands.

It was then a hero came running in their direction, one Shoto recalled seeing at headquarters. He approached Endeavor and immediately began whispering to him in a hurried, stressed manner, and Endeavor's back straightened at whatever he heard. Shoto straightened in turn, the niggling feeling that something had gone wrong solidifying when Endeavor began to break into a jog.

"There's been a villain incident! Follow me, Shoto; it's about time you truly saw what it means to be a hero!"

Right then, Shoto's phone vibrated in his pocket. He had turned off the vibrate in the car, in the hopes that the constant tapping noise as he fake-chatted (when he was actually just typing random words in a blank note) would irritate Endeavor into silence, but had turned it on again afterward for the sake of professionalism. Now, as he opened the message and took in its odd, then alarming, contents, Shoto could only fervently thank his ancestors that he had even noticed the vibrate in the first place.

"Just a location?" he murmured, a frown pulling at his brows. Midoriya wasn't the type to send something like this without purpose; obviously, something had gone wrong.

"Why are you looking at your phone and not at me! Look at me when I'm talking to you, Shoto!" Endeavor bellowed, already a ways ahead.

Seeing the Number Two Hero in his full glory had been a large reason for his interning with him in the first place. It was funny that now, with the ominous message staring up at him from his screen (blank, except for an innocuous pin with the directions and link to a GPS tracking site), that reason and all the others cleared from his mind like it had been wiped clean, and written over that blank space were the words:

**My friend is in trouble. I'm going to save him** _. _

"Shoto, where are you going?!" came the next bellow, as he did an abrupt u-turn and began to jog back down the street the way they had come.

"Sorry, something's come up," Shoto called over his shoulder as he slipped his phone back into his pocket, the route already memorized. "I'll be in an alleyway down 4-2-10 Echo Street! When you've finished, come find me, and bring whatever available heroes you can with you! I'll leave the other business in your hands."

As insurance that Endeavor would actually listen to him, for once, Shoto added on a bit of flattery as well as a concession: "If you're the one handling it, I'm sure it'll be taken care of in no time. But my friend might be in trouble, so I have to go."

So saying, Shoto mentally mapped out the route showed in the GPS tracking app, and ran.

* * *

There were many things he had imagined seeing in the few minutes he spent running, full tilt, down the sometimes loud, sometimes quiet streets. He had pictured Midoriya, separated from the hero he was interning with (who had it been again? Grand Bird? Some relative unknown, in any case) and nearly overcome by villains; Midoriya, a dying civilian or hero in his arms, his phone lost at some unknown point and unable to defend himself from an attacking villain without potentially hurting the injured victim; Midoriya, the one injured, quietly bleeding out in an alley, his last conscious act to group-send his location to all his contacts in a desperate attempt to chase off the inevitable.

That last image plastered itself across his mind-scape in bright technicolor, and it served to spur him on even faster in his search, desperate to keep that horrible future from coming to pass.

He nearly missed the alley, when he finally found it. Without the barely-heard, desperate cry of, "Stop it!", he might have walked right on past it.

But when the second cry rose in the air, louder and more despairing, Shoto didn't stop to think.

He slid into the alley at a run, took in what was happening in two split-second blinks of his eyes, and let his eager fire explode out of him without pause, straight through the raised, glinting light of a katana's blade.

The Hero Killer: Stain—unmistakable in the glow of the fire illuminating the dark alley—jumped back out of range, giving Shoto the few seconds he needed to catch his breath and get the minute tremors in his limbs under control.

That had been close. _Too_ close.

"Just your location, Midoriya, really?" he said dryly, trying to hide his relief behind sarcasm. He flashed the image of the GPS app to Midoriya and watched the blatant relief in his teary eyes. "You've got to give more detail than that when shit happens. You almost made me late."

"What are you _doing_ here?" Iida shouted, desperation and anger in his hoarse voice, but Shoto didn't wait around to hear any more.

He immediately stamped his left foot down and let his ice coat the ground, making Stain jump to avoid it. In the time between the man jumping and touching down on the ground again, Shoto released a rising shelf of ice to take the three slumped forms of Iida, Midoriya and a hero he didn't recognize out of harm's way, and shot out fire to cover them. They tumbled out of their frozen beds a second later, to slide down the icy slopes and safely to the ground behind him.

"I've let the pros know where I was headed, so they'll be here in minutes," Shoto said tersely, making sure that his voice carried towards the villain staring him down across the newly-frozen alley.

He stood before his fallen friends, the cold fear in his stomach thawing into hot rage the more images of what-ifs flashed through his mind. Shoto focused his concentration, determined, now more than ever, that the terrible futures his mind had kindly conjured for him would never come to pass.

"I won't let you hurt my friends, Hero Killer Stain," he promised, the heat in his voice a perfect match to the flames dancing their way across his left arm and shoulder.

"Don't let him cut you!" Midoriya shouted from behind him. "I'm pretty sure his quirk allows him to steal your movements if he ingests your blood! That's how he got the three of us!"

Shoto drew his arms up into a fighting stance, letting his eyes fall to Midoriya to reassure him. "That's why he uses a blade, then. So long as I keep my distance—"

That moment of distraction cost him. Shoto looked back in time to save his left eye, but not soon enough to avoid the blade cutting into his left cheek, not very far below it.

In the split-second between the knife grazing its mark and Shoto turning his attention back to the villain, the Hero Killer had closed the distance between them, drawn a trench knife the length of Shoto's forearm from its sheath, and swung.

Like with the thrown knife, Shoto barely managed to send up an ice-pillar to block the swing in time to avoid a knife to the throat. A sixth-sense made Shoto look up, to see—

"Fuck," he spit out, as the katana came down straight for his head, but he didn't have time to do more than look back at the Hero Killer before—

—the man grabbed his collar, pulling Shoto's face within reach of his own, a long, grotesquely-thick tongue coming out of his mouth to touch the cut on Shoto's face—

—and Shoto's fire burst to life, barely in time to save him from the same fate as his friends.

"Shit, that was close," he gasped, once he had made it back to a safe-enough distance—if there was such a thing, against this monster. Next, he threw out his ice in a tall, thick wall, which was easily taken care of with a swipe of a chipped katana blade, so Shoto adjusted accordingly, and followed the second, thicker wall of ice with a billowing stream of fire.

"This is my fight!" Shoto heard Iida call behind him, tears of frustration in his voice. "I inherited the name Ingenium, so it's my duty to make this right! Stop getting in the way!"

Stain dodged the ice and made to get closer, so Shoto made a shield out of his fire with his left hand while drawing more moisture out of the air, to create enough ice to turn the alleys into a jagged, frozen landscape.

"That's funny," Shoto said to the other boy, almost losing the fight to keep his voice even under a spike of renewed anger. "I don't remember ever seeing that look on the old Ingenium's face."

_Come on, Iida. Come to your senses, you are _better _than this! _

"You've got a lot going on behind the scenes in your family too, huh?" he added as an afterthought, keeping his body ducked low and tensed for the next attack.

Family was a difficult thing, even when you didn't have to juggle love and hate and find a way to live with both. Shoto knew and understood this, but whatever Iida's hangups with his brother or his family legacy, here, right now, when their lives were on the line? That hesitancy and doubt had absolutely no place.

Just then, the gigantic, frozen wall between them and the blade-wielding psychopath shattered into large, useless chunks of ice. Shoto narrowed his eyes and his focus, sparing half an irritated thought for the way his quirk was being so easily overcome.

"Purposely blocking the line of sight between you and an opponent significantly stronger and faster than you… what arrogance!" Stain called as he came down from the _iaido_ move that had so neatly shattered the wall.

Refusing to acknowledge the part of him that wanted to return a petty quip about long swords and compensating for something, Shoto snarled in reply: "Call it arrogance if you like, but you won't be calling it that for long." He strengthened the heat of his fire—

—and gasped at a sudden spike of pain. He looked down, and saw two small blades protruding from his arm, already beginning to trail thick lines of veinal blood in ugly dark streaks from the site of the injury.

Shoto turned his head sharply to his side at movement in his peripheral, eyes widening as he took in Stain coming down on the unnamed hero— still frozen by Stain's quirk—with his sword, grasped tightly in both hands.

His right hand grasping the injury on his left, Shoto could only open his mouth helplessly to shout something, anything—a prayer? A useless cry for help that was taking too long in coming?—when a miracle in the form of bright-green streaks of lighting came shooting past him, taking Stain with it to gouge a giant path into the concrete wall as they drove into it for a good three meters. Momentum took them half-way up the concrete wall, nearly two meters above ground, before gravity began to take hold and they sprang off the wall and apart.

Shoto stared up at the inexplicably free Midoriya, a small portion of his mind wondering, _Green?_ while the rest filled with a deep sense of relief.

"Midoriya!" he cried after him, and Midoriya, knowing what he was asking, said: "I don't know, I was just suddenly able to move!"

A time limit? Shoto squeezed at the warmth dripping down his arm, not noticing the intensifying burn as he pressed the knives in farther.

"It's not a time limit," the still-unnamed hero corrected shakily, jolting Shoto, who hadn't realize he'd spoken out loud.

"That kid got hit with his quirk the last. If it was a time limit, there's no way he'd be moving so soon."

Shoto's eyes went to Stain, narrowing as he followed his and Midoriya's quick, back and forth movements. Not a time limit?

"Get back, Midoriya!" he barked as Midoriya tripped and fell on his face. He sent a spray of frozen stalactites to back up his retreat, and kept his eyes on Stain as Midoriya crawled beside him, coughing tiredly.

"He ingests the blood to keep his victims from moving," Midoriya explained hoarsely. "Since I was the last to be caught but the first to move again, I can think of three explanations:

"The first is that his power weakens the more victims he has caught in his net. The second is that the amount matters, and the less blood he ingests, the shorter his quirk lasts. And the third is that it works differently, depending on your blood type."

From the way Stain's eyes narrowed, Shoto would bet his money on the last one being correct.

"Blood type… I'm B," the prone hero said. "I'm type A," Iida added, bring up their blood types to one A, one B, and two Os.

"That's correct," Stain agreed with a sinister smile. "It does have to do with blood types."

"…Just knowing his quirk doesn't help us much, though," Midoriya admitted in an undertone, not taking his eyes off the killer.

"I wanted to get those two out of here," Shoto said, eyes cutting to Midoriya, but just as quickly back to the danger before them, "but he's too fast to catch with my fire or my ice. I can't risk keeping myself open to attack for that long."

Stain, apparently content to wait out their planning, stood patiently before them. The ragged, off-white scarf wrapped about his eyes, completely covering his nose, did much to obscure his features. It gave his eyes a shadowed quality that was made all the worse by the way the only light they had to see by was cast by the distant streetlights and the remnants of Shoto's quirk, which was even now burning itself out as it quickly ate through the bits and pieces of garbage that had been cast about during their short, but intense, fight.

The red scarf wrapped about his neck and shoulders and trailing down his back added another layer to the man's overall intimidating presence, the dark, wine-red giving the crimson of his eyes a brighter, deeper intensity. From what Shoto had observed of the man in the short time he had been given, Stain wasn't the type to care about outward appearance; this, if anything, just made his overall look—one of a savage, mindless killer—that much more impressive, for knowing it hadn't been intentional.

"Our best bet," Shoto concluded, with the heavy weight of certainty, "is to keep him occupied for as long as it takes the pros to get here."

It would not be easy, and they would likely be walking away from this fight with considerably worse injuries, but if it meant getting everyone out of there alive, Shoto was willing to stand his ground and do what was necessary, no matter what he personally had to sacrifice in the process.

Midoriya nodded his agreement, saying: "You've lost too much blood, Todoroki-kun, so too much movement isn't safe for you. I'll go in close, try to keep him distracted and away, and you can cover me with your quirk."

The familiar glowing-red lines of his quirk began to spread across his face, before fading into a less-familiar green. Shoto resolved to find out what that change was about when this was all over, and nodded to show his agreement.

"It's a bit risky, but it's the only chance we've got," Shoto said, and Midoriya made his wincing way to his feet, and managed to stand straight. They were both tired: Midoriya, from whatever battle he had had to fight before Shoto made it into the picture; Shoto, from utilizing both his quirks in tandem, when he had barely used his fire before now, and kept accidentally over-casting and wasting precious energy (strangely, his left side had yet to begin to itch or even bother him, which was a question for another time.) Despite their tiredness and the terrible odds against them, they stood tall, unfaltering in the face of evil. A thought drifted into Shoto's mind, unprompted: _Is this what being a true hero feels like?_

"He will not touch them," Shoto vowed solemnly, and together, they stood side-by-side, tensing muscles and shifting limbs into stances in preparation for the oncoming fight.

Midoriya made the first move, shooting up in a blur of green to bounce back and forth against the small gap between the two buildings lining the alley, quickly taking Stain, and the fight, away from the injured. Shoto moved to cover him with a thick shield of ice, eyes keenly following the movements should he need to intervene.

In that moment, as he stood between the classmate he was tentatively beginning to think of as a friend and the murderer who wanted to kill them both, Shoto found the words that he had been trying to say to Iida running through his mind. The words flowed as if across a blank page, forming a letter in his head that he might never send, but that needed to be written down regardless.

**Dear Iida**_,_ the letter would begin.

**Ever since I heard the news about your brother's injury, you've been constantly on my mind. **

**I, of all people, would recognize the face of someone who's acting on pent-up resentment and anger; I am intimately familiar with the color of the red that clouds your eyes, the way the resentment narrows your field of vision till you can't see anything past it. **

**That day, after the end of the Sports Festival, after everything I thought I had known about my quirk and myself had been thrown into disarray, I went to see her: my mother. I went and I told her everything that had happened in my life since she had left it. I told her about me, about who I am, what I've tried to become and who I became in spite of that. My mother cried and apologized, and we forgave each other surprisingly quickly. **

_("Hey, Mom," Shoto said quietly, into the breathless silence of the room. "Been a while." _

_A smile, brighter then the rays of the setting sun shining across her folded hands, slowly turned up the corners of her mouth.) _

**The old me wouldn't have been able to choose my old man's agency for the internship. **

**It's not that I've let go of my resentment, or forgiven him. It's simply that I knew the benefits of seeing the Number Two Hero in his element, and the things I could learn from his years of experience far outweighed my desire to give in to my anger and spit on his offered hand. So even though he was, and is, a scumbag, I went, and I learned, without letting our history cloud my judgment and keep me from gaining the experience I was being offered. **

**Because I was able to let go. Because someone taught me how to. **

Midoriya dodged a flying knife, the afterimage of his quirk shining bright, electric green, but failed to see the swipe of a jagged blade come flying at his hip. Shoto threw out his fire, straining to control and aim it without sending it wildly in all directions, and was relieved when it successfully diverted the villain and sent him flying backward.

**It was all so simple! It was so simple, but I just didn't see it. **

**_"But it's not his power, is it? It's yours, Todoroki!"_**

**A few simple words, and all the things I had thought I knew about myself shattered upon the remnants of my selfish pride, and on my stubborn clinging to pointless resentment and anger. **

A lucky swing, and Midoriya's leg gained a new cut on his calve, just above the tops of his shoes. Shoto saw him go down, saw Stain aiming to strike, and sent more fire roaring in a straight, barely-controlled line, knocking him out of the way.

**Midoriya saved me, in more ways than I think I could ever tell him, and I would like to do that for you. Can I find the words to do that for you, Iida?**

"Please stop," a voice croaked behind him, and Shoto looked down, fire still streaming out of his outstretched hand.

"I'm… already…" What he was, Iida didn't say, but the tears dripping down a face contorted with anguish and resignation told Shoto all he needed to know.

His eyes tightened at the corners and he gritted his teeth in resolve.

**Would you listen, if I did?**

"If you want to stop us, then stand up!" Shoto screamed, eyes blurring in the blinding light of his next wave of fire. "Get on your damn feet and _make_ us!"

Midoriya abruptly dropped to the ground, and Shoto saw the way Stain's tongue disappeared into a mouth stretching into a triumphant grin. He cast more ice, feeling as if time were a physical entity running past the tips of his grasping fingers; every tick on an invisible clock counted down the passing seconds, the loud _boom-boom-boom_ of his heartbeat saying: _You are out of time._

**Whether you hear them or not, the only words I can say to you are: **

"Is the kind of hero you want to be? Is this who you are? Take a good, proper look at yourself and make your fucking choice!" Shoto shouted in desperation, hoping, praying, that just this once, his words could be enough (that he could be enough). He threw his arm back, and his flames rose again in response to his command.

"On your right!" Midoriya yelped, and Shoto obliged, shooting fire that failed, again, to meet its target. He followed it up with ice, with similar results.

"Ice and fire…" Stain intoned as he dodged, past growing clumps of ice that tried make the way impassable, as if they were nothing.

_Let's see you dodge this,_ Shoto thought grimly, and sent a direct column of flame straight at the oncoming villain.

"Has no one ever told you? You focus too much on your quirk, thinking it makes you invincible. You're leaving yourself wide open!"

The next few seconds happened in the slow, choppy frames of an old, black and white film:

Stain, moving past or cutting through every spear of ice shot his way.

The fire glowing under his skin, for once cooperating as it sent a discouraging gout of fire in front of him.

That fire, easily dodged, to make way for a sword.

A sword, steadily grown duller and more chipped as it was utilized against ice, still glinting sharply as it came under Shoto's guard, and sliced upwards.

Shoto saw it all as it happened, helpless to stop the future he could see coming: the sword, still sharp enough to cut, digging deeply into the delicate skin hiding veins and sensitive nerves, splitting skin and muscle to create an injury that could easily prove debilitating without instant first aid.

"_RECIPRO-BURST!_"

The words—and the accompanying kick, fast as lighting—broke straight through the last frame, as easily as they broke the jagged sword in half. Shoto, his heart still lodged tightly in his throat, fell back gasping, fear thrumming like a physical entity in his chest.

That had been so close, but Iida… _Iida_!

Shoto spun around, unable to help the wildness in his eyes, and looked at the panting Iida.

"How did you break out of it?" he demanded. "No, never mind, I suppose that quirk wasn't quite as incredible as I originally thought it was." The petty thought, when voiced aloud, didn't quite make him feel as great as he had intended it to, but the little thrill it gave him as the villain's eyes narrowed was worth it.

"Midoriya, Todoroki," Iida broke through the impromptu stare-down Shoto had initiated with Stain, wiping the sneer off his face. "I apologize for wrapping you up in my mess."

"You're still going on about that?" Midoriya rasped, his face showing the pain he was in from where he sat, collapsed on the ground. His face, so expressive, also showed his growing anger.

Iida straightened, and continued with fierce conviction: "I'm sorry for allowing myself to forget the things that are truly important. I will let myself forget again, and that is why I can't allow either of you to bleed for me any more than you already have!"

"Trying to change for the sake of appearances means nothing," Stain snarled. Blood dripped down from the hand still holding the broken katana, and it clenched, making Shoto fall into a defensive position in return. "People cannot change the core of themselves so easily! You will never be more than a fake, who prioritizes his desires over the lives of others. You are a part of the cancerous growth in society that warps the idea of what a 'hero' truly is."

His blood-shot eyes narrowed. "Someone must set you straight."

"You're an anachronistic fundamentalist," Shoto rebutted, tired of hearing the same, meaningless rhetoric. "Iida, this bastard's a murderer, don't pay any heed to his twisted logic."

"No, he's right," Iida said, grim and resigned. Blood dripped down from a deep cut in his shoulder, one Shoto abruptly realized must have come from when he broke the sword meant for Shoto. It must have caught him somehow, and the thought sent his stomach knotting with guilt.

"My actions tonight have been the farthest thing from heroic. Nevertheless, I refuse to lie down and give up. If I give up here, if I allow myself to break, the hero Ingenium will die!"

Red eyes flashed, and Shoto tensed in preparation.

"As if I will let that happen!"

Instinct made Shoto shove Iida away with his right arm and throw his left forward as a fiery guard, just in time to block a leaping Stain.

Fire exploded forwards, bright yellows and oranges and reds painting the dark alley a shimmering array of colors.

"Idiots, you know he's only after me and the kid with the armor? What are you risking your life for?" the voice of the still-prone hero behind them called, disbelieving and fearful. "Forget fighting this losing battle, and get out while you still can!"

"And leave you guys here to die? I don't think so. Anyway, it doesn't look like he'll be giving us a chance to do that," Shoto gritted out, the arm not occupied gushing flame going to support the lower part of his burning arm that had begun to tremble from his quirk, unused to such constant output, and the pain from his still-bleeding knife-wounds.

"Something clearly changed, just now. He's getting flustered, careless," he added, becoming more sure of his words as each one left his mouth.

Stain had jumped high, stopping gravity from carrying him into the growing path of Shoto's flames by a hasty stab of his broken sword, deep into the building's concrete. Now he jumped, out and over the ice still covering the alley floor, and Shoto twisted his body to follow, his right foot pressing into the ground with his quirk as he moved. Ice followed the swiftly moving form, cut down or dodged every time.

He had dodged, but… was he getting slower?

Shoto's eyes narrowed in thought, though he didn't stop sending his quirk out in constant waves, relying mostly on his better-trained right side.

Taking into account the time limit, the uncertain element of the blood types, plus the way Stain had to get in close contact to be able to utilize it, it wasn't actually that spectacular a quirk, or so frightening. Coupled with the way he had to fight multiple opponents at the same time, with a quirk ill-suited to it, made Shoto think Stain was getting desperate to finish them off before the pros arrived.

Stain flew at them again, this time swinging back around and over the wall of ice Shoto had cast around them, and Shoto threw his throbbing left arm up to see if fire would be any more effective.

"Todoroki-kun! Are you able to regulate temperature with your quirk?" Iida shouted, over the crackle-swoosh of attacking flames.

"Yes," Shoto shouted back, "But my left side is unpracticed. Why?"

"I need you to freeze my engines for me, without plugging the exhaust!"

At those words, Shoto jerked his head to face him, surprised.

In his distraction, Stain made his move.

"You're a nuisance! Die!" A knife flew through the burning heat, and Shoto barely caught the flash of silver as he turned his head, only to have an armored glove shoot in front of his face, catching the knife before it could meet its intended target.

The air in Shoto's lungs came whooshing out like he had been punched in the solar plexus.

"Iida-kun!" Midoriya's strangled voice rang out, in time with another deep thud, as a trench knife impeded itself in Iida's forearm, dragging it and the rest of him down to the ground.

"Fuck, Iida!" Shoto dropped to a crouch, desperate to do something, anything, but Iida's harsh: "Don't worry about me, just do it!" spurred him into action, and he froze the boy's leg-engines with equally cold determination.

Stain had made his way to higher ground by jumping from precarious windowsills to wobbly pipes, and now came shooting down, almost too fast to track. Shoto shot successive gouts of flame, and hoped that whatever Iida had planned, it would be enough.

In the next instant, he got his answer.

Shoto looked up at the night sky, as two blurs—one with a glowing after-image of blue-orange flame, the other with brightly-shining green electricity—went shooting after the dark form falling towards them, and smiled.

A glowing fist, and a foot moving like lighting, landed in tandem.

Stain lost his balance and began tumbling down without control, but he was still clearly conscious. Shoto shouted, "Keep at him! Don't stop yet!"

Again, a leg went flying, and caught its target; on the literal heels of that kick, a burst of fire enveloped the defeated monster, taking it down for good.

Seconds later, two forms landed, one after the other with differing levels of control, into a cradle of ice, to send them safely sliding to the ground; and a body fell, limply, to land upon a tall pillar of ice that rose to meet it, and went still.

The Hero Killer: Stain had been captured.

* * *

The aftermath was less glorious. Unlike the terrifying adrenaline rush of the previous minutes, digging through trash bins to find some kind of binding material was a strange letdown. Never-the-less, as he dug into a large bin and tried to sort through the contents without touching anything suspect, Shoto could not deny that he would choose this activity over the previous one any day, so long as lives were at stake.

_That is, of course_, Shoto thought, wrinkling his nose at the awful smell as he pulled a slightly-damaged rope from a bag and tried not to think of how it had gotten there, _under the condition that there are lives at stake._

As for right now, Shoto would happily have dumped Stain into the trash bin rather than be sorting through it for capture materials, but there was no help for it, with pro-heroes hopefully on the way and a reputation to maintain that did not include dumping suspects into trash bins.

They worked together to tie him up, he and Iida, with only three working arms between them; Midoriya couldn't quite move, and had settled for checking over the hero 'Native'—Shoto had overheard Midoriya calling him as such, and tried to memorize it. It wasn't every day you saved a pro-hero's life, and he ought to commemorate it by actually remembering his name.

Once that was done, and Native had managed to get to his feet and pick up the protesting Midoriya ("But you're injured—" "Your legs are hurt, aren't they? It's only a scratch, I'll be all right, now let me carry you."), and Shoto pulled the unresisting, dead-weight of Stain behind him.

As they walked, Native self-deprecatingly said: "Sorry that I didn't manage to do anything. Some pro-hero I am."

As Midoriya rushed to reassure him, Shoto—too tired to bother sparing feelings—bluntly stated: "You were useless, yes." As Midoriya gave a horrified little gasp, and Iida began to say, warningly, "Todoroki—", Shoto continued:

"Even with the guy making mistakes, we barely won three-against-one. I'd say it's only luck we won at all; he must have gotten distracted, and forgotten about Midoriya's recovery time. Towards the end, he wasn't able to stand up to Iida and Midoriya's ending moves, but up until that point, he was a very difficult opponent. I don't think it's fair to beat yourself up over not standing a chance, when we barely managed to stay on our feet."

Into the following silence, and feeling the beginning flickers of relief at knowing they were out of danger, Shoto belatedly added: "Just be grateful we all made it out alive."

They came out of the alley a moment later and were swiftly bathed in moonlight. The sight of that pale light—so different from the constant, aggressive light of his fire that had been their main light to see by for the past few minutes that had seemed like hours—felt like a soothing statement of safety, and Shoto felt his shoulders sag, the emotional and physical roller coaster of the last few minutes dropping down like a physical weight.

Native sighed, as if he, too, could feel that weight, and began to say, "Now let's quickly get him to the police station—" when across the street, someone called:

"Hey… hey, what are you doing here?"

Shoto saw Midoriya raise his head wearily, before opening his eyes wide in surprise. "Gran Torino?"

Oh, Midoriya's internship hero. Shoto appraised the small, yellow-clad older gentlemen, wondering what had made him choose someone like Midoriya who, unless you knew him, didn't give off the air of a potentially big-name hero.

Before Midoriya could say more, there was a rush of footsteps, and they were soon crowded by heroes, some asking about the situation, some about their injuries, and others hurriedly called the proper authorities and an ambulance. When they spotted the Hero Killer, tied up and silent on the ground, the sound of rumbling voices rose exponentially.

Shoto watched all the moving mouths, spitting out words in an endless stream of meaningless sound, and felt so, so tired.

A few minutes later, a hero was asking him about his injuries, and Shoto was robotically fielding off his concern, replying that he was fine, it was Iida who was hurt—when the boy in question came towards where he and Midoriya stood, and folded himself into a bow.

"You were both injured because of me," he said to the ground. His voice was wet with building tears, and a part of Shoto ached to hear it; another part of him, that knew the value of something he found so inherently hateful and humiliating, was glad.

"Because of my anger, I… I lost sight of what I was doing, and became unable to see past it."

Midoriya's eyebrows furrowed, and the look on his face was sad. "I'm sorry, too. I'm sorry for not realizing how you were feeling, and how bad it had gotten, even though we're friends."

Liquid, shimmering silver in the reflected light of the moon, dripped slowly to the ground.

Shoto looked at those bowed shoulders, and could only feel relief.

**Can I find the words to save you, Iida? Would you listen, if I did? **

It seemed like, just maybe, the answer was yes.

"Pull yourself together," Shoto added his two-cents. He felt light, even with the weight on his shoulders, and it made him feel bold, and slightly silly. "You're the Class Rep, aren't you?"

Just then, the hairs on his bare-forearms rose, a shudder rising up through his body as his sixth-sense tingled. Shoto's eyes shot up to the sky, in time with Gran Torino's cry of, "Get down!"

In between one breath and the next, the bird-like form of some heteromorphic-quirked villain (one with a strangely familiar look about them that sent Shoto's skin crawling with unwelcome memory) was flying towards them; then Midoriya was gone, snatched up in their prehistoric claws like a rat snatched by a swooping predator.

Shoto cried out instinctively for his friend, but could only watch helplessly as he drew further and further away, his eyes watering from the strong gusts of wind billowing in the villain's wake.

Then, something moved.

"_This society, with its fake heroes, bloated and obese on their unearned accolades and overabundant rewards—_"

A dark form ran, quick and light on its feet, even as the villain holding Midoriya aloft let loose a haunting cry and began to drop from the sky.

"—_and the criminals, who throw their power about idly, with no goal or purpose—_"

The form launched itself into the air, and a bandaged arm rose, a blade glinting in the pale light of the moon. It landed, blood spurted in a massive gush, and the winged-villain fell to the ground and skidded, dragging up chunks of the bricked sidewalk as it came to a rumbling stop. The form that stood above it, bi-colored scarves flapping in the windy aftereffects of their fall, sent a chill that had nothing to do with his quirk traveling up Shoto's spine.

A knife, plunged into the uncovered brain-stem of the defeated monster, twisted and yanked, sending blood gushing once again.

"…_Should all be purged_. This is all to create… a more just society!"

The heroes about him began to mutter, trying to decide how to handle their suddenly escaped, and now armed, incredibly dangerous prisoner, but Shoto found that his eyes wouldn't leave the prone form of his green-haired friend... and though he wanted to go to him, his feet refused to move.

"What are you all doing, standing about in a group like that?" a familiar (and right now, strangely welcome, for perhaps the first time in his life) voice boomed out disapprovingly. "The villain ought to have come this way, why aren't you going after it?"

One of the heroes piped up, saying, "How are things on your end? Was the villain taken care of?"

"It took a bit more effort than expected," Endeavor admitted reluctantly. Shoto had yet to turn around, but he could imagine the look on the man's face: disgruntled at even the smallest implication that he had fallen short at something.

"Don't tell me," Endeavor added afterward, slowly, "that that man is…"

Stain pressed a hand roughly into Midoriya's back, not giving him room to do more than wiggle as he protested and struggled to get away. Shoto found that maybe he did have it in him to move after all, and put one, shaking foot in front of him.

But before he could do more, flames rose, high and bright enough to cast shadows across the ground before his feet, and Endeavor called out, "Hero Killer!" In reply to the menacing, blue-eyed glare, came the snarled: "_Endeavor_."

Gran Torino had just finished shouting, "Wait, Endeavor—" and Shoto's foot had only just risen to try another step, when—

An off-white scarf floated to the ground, and what was revealed sent the world shuddering to a halt.

Red irises set in sclera shot through with broken capillaries, no longer half-hidden by a fraying cloth, set upon the gathered heroes—Shoto among them—with a deep, primal fear-inducing glare. The fear gathered in an almost physical wave, sticking Shoto's feet to the ground, freezing every limb in place, making him feel as if he had been caught in the Hero Killer's quirk, and unable to do more than listen helplessly to the monster's short, but poignant, manifesto:

"I must make things right," he growled, his voice echoing in the silent streets. "I might paint the world in the red of fake heroes' blood; I must take back what it means to be a hero!

"COME! TRY TO COME AFTER ME, YOU FAKES!"

Shoto felt as if he had been cast into an illusion, one that distorted the very air he breathed, sending an existential terror shooting through his lungs and turning the man before his eyes into a ginormous, inescapable giant created entirely from fear. Each footstep brought the titan closer, closer, with a boom of sound that should be loud enough to shatter its way through his ears and past them to what lay between. He wanted to cover his ears against the sound, but he couldn't move his hands; he wanted to close his eyes, but his lids stayed stubbornly open; he wanted to hide, but his body wouldn't shift even a single millimeter.

Crazed, furious red eyes seemed to meet his own, and the following words seared themselves into his very being:

"THE ONLY ONE I'LL LET KILL ME… IS THE TRUE HERO, ALL MIGHT."

Shoto felt as if he were caught in an endless moment, wherein the words rang and rebounded throughout his brain, echoing back and forth in an endless cycle.

Into the quiet of the following silence, a knife dropped to the ground with a quiet clatter, breaking it.

"I do believe he's… lost consciousness," Endeavor said, slowly, disbelievingly, and the words shocked Shoto out of the impossible illusion.

Unable to help it, he collapsed, as if he had been cut down at the knees. Around him, heroes and Iida did the same, all of them overcome, as if they too had been cast into that strange, fearful illusion.

After that, things moved quickly, faster than Shoto could honestly keep up with, as the world had never seemed to really settle back in right after those few, terror-studded seconds.

By the time things really slotted themselves back into coherency, Shoto was being urged to lie down on a bed, his wounds bandaged and somehow already changed into a hospital gown, and collapsed on his side without giving the unexpected change in location any further thought.

They had fought a notorious serial killer today. Shoto imagined he was perfectly entitled to shut everything out, other than his immediate desire to sleep and keep on sleeping.

So he was, and he did, and when he dreamed, he dreamed of a world bathed in red.

* * *

Shoto had known that they would be suffering consequences of some sort for their actions, but he hadn't imagined… this.

_"The fuck you say?" he snarled, feeling his quirk raging beneath his bandaged arm. His fire was as eager as always, and Shoto, strangely, was not terrified at the thought of setting it free. _

_"Todoroki-kun!" Midoriya squeaked, horrified, mirrored by Iida's disapproving, "Todoroki-kun!" _

_Shoto continued, unheeding, his eyes glaring unflinchingly into the Chief of Police's own. "Midoriya and I saved Iida's life and the life of the Pro-Hero Native. Are you telling me we should have stood back and waited, with our thumbs up our asses, for a serial killer to murder them in front of our eyes—and all because of some stupid fucking law?" _

_Waking up in a hospital bed, disoriented and still-tired, had been enough to draw his mood to the very edge of civil; this new bullshit, with the actual Chief of Police of Hosu, standing there, telling them they would be censured for saving someone's life was... it was complete crazy talk, was what it was, and it had easily pushed him over the edge. Iida was shushing him, Midoriya gripping his shoulders and trying to say something, but Shoto straightened his back and pulled his lips up in a condescending sneer, nowhere near ready to back down. _

_They had faced off with a dangerous villain… and survived. If Shoto had to suffer through days and weeks of nightmares as punishment for risking his life, there was no way in hell he was going to be putting up with anything else. _

_He was preparing to say just that (or something to that effect, interspersed with plenty of swear words), when—_

_"That is quite enough out of you, brat," a familiar voice cut in, shocking Shoto out of his building rage. His eyes shot to the door, which he had missed sliding open, and caught tired, irritated black. _

_"Keep that mouth up and I'll have you in detention, scrubbing the classroom floors with a toothbrush, for the rest of the month. That's the Chief of Police you're speaking to, have some goddamn respect. Apologize. _Now_." _

_Resentfully, but without delay, because Aizawa-sensei didn't make idle threats, Shoto grunted out an apology and gripped the end of Iida's bed, not bothering to hide his glower. That didn't last, either, as his eyes quickly caught a matching scowl and a finger that sliced meaningfully across a throat. With a silent gulp, Shoto finally reined in his temper, for real this time. What was Sensei doing in their hospital room, anyway, so far away from UA grounds? _

_('I'm not going to pick up any of you', Sensei had said, and Shoto had known he was lying, but actually being presented with physical proof was—) _

_As if in answer to his question, Sensei stepped fully through the hospital doors and past Tsurugamae-shocho, Gran Torino and Iida's intern Hero (Man... manimal?), with a nod for the three of them, saying: _

_"Gentlemen, greeting. I'm the Pro-Hero Eraserhead, and these kids' homeroom teacher at UA Academy. Principal Nezu sent me as soon as we got the word. I'm to rendezvous with the police, keep him updated, and make sure that _these three—"_ the words were said in a threatening growl, aimed at Shoto and his friends, which made them all flinch back with building dread, "—aren't causing any trouble." _

_"A pleasure to meet you," Tsurugamae-shocho said, nodding his canine head in greeting. "I was just about to explain to the boys that they would have to be officially reprimanded… If we were to go about this in an official fashion. Here is an alternative I would like you all to consider." _

_And although the following words nearly sent Shoto into another rage (with Aizawa-sensei's forbidding presence about the only keeping him silent), in the end, they all reluctantly agreed to keep the news out of the press and give the glory to Endeavor. _

Even the thought of it, now, sent a sour emotion tingling over this tongue, but Shoto swallowed it down, because the alternative was having this on his permanent record, and a blow to his pride could not compare.

It was still a bitter pill to swallow, regardless, particularly as _Endeavor_ was the one they had selected to stand in the spotlight. A mental picture of the man, standing before the press and spewing out blatant lies, passed over his mind; and Shoto had to hide his face in his shoulder and pretend to cough, to avoid anyone catching sight of it, and asking him what the hell was wrong with his face.

"—you'll be here for as long as it takes you to heal," Aizawa-sensei was saying, and Shoto pushed away bitter fire and ash from his mind, to focus his attention on his surroundings.

"For that long?" Midoriya was asking, sounding dismayed. Sensei tapped on their individual charts, laid out at the foot of Midoriya's bed, and gave the boy a pointed look.

"You can argue with your mother about it, if you like? I'm sure she'll have some very choice things to say about that."

Sensei tapped again, then added, as if as an afterthought: "Of course, if you choose to cause your mother any grief after what did—and could have—happened last night, I'll be forced to step in… and I'm sure you don't want that."

Midoriya visibly shuddered, wilting into his pillow, which Shoto whole-heartedly sympathized with. Then it was his turn to shy back, as Sensei sent them each a long, dark look that promised many things, but none of them pleasant.

"That goes for all three of you, do you understand? Your families are going to have a hard enough time handling the news, I don't want you making it any worse. Try anything stupid—or rude, Todoroki, don't think I've forgotten that shit you pulled earlier—and you'll answer to me."

They all nodded respectfully, the honest fear in their faces at the thought seeming to satisfy their teacher. Then his features softened, and he leaned his hands against the rail of Midoriya's bed. He met their eyes again, but this time the emotion behind them seemed almost... kind.

"You did good," he told them, his deep voice sincere with emotion. "You not only survived against a terribly, unimaginably dangerous man who has already taken down countless pro-heroes, you fought him to a standstill, and then took him down completely. You were injured, but you were victorious, and you have every right to be proud of yourselves for your accomplishment. I know I am."

Pleasure spread tendrils of heat through his chest and up to his cheeks, and Shoto looked down at his bedspread and his folded hands to hide the shy smile that spread across his face.

('I'm not going to pick up any of you', Sensei had said, and Shoto knew that he had lied.)

And so Shoto's internship came to a surprising end. He was released from the hospital shortly after (with his injuries treated and no real cause to keep him), and was soon traveling home on a bullet train, sat beside a surprisingly quiet Endeavor. As the passing scenery flew by in a whirl of color, Shoto gazed outside, his thoughts quiet and content, and kept the words, 'I know I am' close to his chest.


	16. A Little Help From My Friends

A/N: As an apology for the huge delay between updates, have two chapters!

* * *

Days passed and turned into weeks, some passing swifter than others, and Shoto plodded through the days with little care for their passing. The final exams of the first semester would soon be approaching, and although Shoto had vaguely given thought to upping his study hours, he hadn't given it more thought than that.

It also hadn't occurred to him to see what his classmates were feeling about the swiftly approaching date, which was a mistake, in hindsight.

"Todoroki. You're smart." The statement was matter-of-fact and not a question, said in the slightly impatient tones of somebody with a goal in mind, and the complete intention of bulldozing you over with it. It was a tone of voice Shoto was very familiar with, only implanted into a considerably younger, considerably more feminine-sounding voice, which was an unpleasant surprise. He also didn't recognize it, which was unpleasant, but not really a surprise. Shoto could currently only recall, off the top of his head, about half of his classmates' names, though if he heard their quirk, he could hypothetically point them out in a crowd… hypothetically.

Suffice it to say, Shoto had many more than one reason to feel very reluctant when he raised his head—in a long, slow sweep from the bottom of the person's indoor shoes, past the off-white earphones dangling out of one blazer pocket and up to their pursed lips—and finally met the person's eyes.

Ah. Long Earlobes. She had a quirk similar to Mic-sensei's, with the cords dangling from her ears able to amplify the sound of her… heartbeat? Or something to that extent. Her name was…

Anyway.

_You're smart_, she'd said. Shoto rolled those words around in his mind, trying to find the hidden catch in the compliment, wondering where she could possibly be going with this—before giving up.

He leaned back, instead, letting his right arm drape across the back of his seat, giving the impression of a slouch; his head went to rest on his raised right hand, next, palm open, body relaxed; his eyes, though on her face, were actually focused on the bridge of her nose, giving the impression he was looking through her, rather than at her.

"…And?" Shoto said at length, polite, but bored. He slouched even further, letting his eyes become half-shut, emphasizing the impression he wished to give: already tired of this conversation, and of her, before it had even started.

(This, Shoto had learned from watching Natsuo, before simply distancing himself from conversations hadn't been enough for his older brother, and he had begun to physically remove himself whenever Father entered the room. Soon enough, he just stopped showing up around the house at all; until one day, Shoto returned to his room after a long session with Endeavor, and found the goodbye note on his bed.)

Long Earlobes looked disconcerted, though her face remained impassive. She had unconsciously taken a half-step back, and her body was now lightly turned to the side in a defensive position. Shoto continued to eye her with heavy-lidded eyes, doing everything he could to non-verbally communicate how very badly he wanted her to drop this conversation and walk away.

Yaoyorozu was smart. Iida was… smart. Midoriya was very intelligent in ways Shoto couldn't even comprehend, and Bakugo…

…In any case, there were plenty of other smart people in the room, and if you were to dig long enough, surely you would find them, eventually.

Shoto looked away, casually, as if her silence meant as little to him as her words, and tried very, very hard not to tense.

"Shit, look, I'm just gonna say it okay?"

Damnit.

"Mina and Denki were freaking out about End of Term Exams and some of the others overheard, and then they started bugging Momo about it and it became this huge thing—anyway, Midoriya is stuttering so much I feel like he's going to be totally useless without help, and Bakugo is being a dick and won't agree to come, but maybe if you're there he'd be more inclined to join? … so could you, like. Just come for a bit? It'll just be a quick study session at Momo's place, it'll be super fast and Momo's family can afford the really good chocolate—what am I saying, your place can probably afford that too." Earlobes sighed, then crossed her arms and apparently settled in to wait for his answer, her only sign of impatience a finger tapping at one arm, and the nearly inaudible tapping of her foot.

Shoto stopped just-short of gaping at her. That was a lot of unfamiliar names, and also… what? Why him?

"I… don't see how I would qualify to, I assume, tutor a group of our classmates," he began, giving each word the careful enunciation and thought they required, lest he should accidentally slip up and start his next sentence with, _FUCK no, thank you and goodbye_. "Unless it is in English, in which case I assume Bakugo would be proficient enough, considering how well he speaks in Mic-sensei's classes. If he refuses to go, asking—" what was his name, Kimi… Keri… Kiri…something! "—Kiri…shima, to attend should be a convincing enough argument. They seem to… get along. Well. Enough?"

Shoto coughed delicately into his right hand, trying his best not to let the blush rising from his chest reach his cheeks. Perhaps it really was time to learn his classmates' names, in the off-chance this type of unfortunate incident were to happen again.

Earlobes inhaled, and expelled her breath in an exaggerated whoosh, her t-zone wrinkling as she frowned down at him. "Well yeah, Kiri's coming, but Bakugo's really being a dick about it and totally refusing to go because his marks are, quote: 'Totally fine, unlike you losers! Go drown in your own lack of effort, shit-bags!', end quote. If you went, he'd probably feel like he had to because, you know, he hates you. And you're a recommendation student, so I don't see how you wouldn't be qualified."

Shoto noticed, with some alarm, that she had dropped out of her defensive posture and now had her hands on her hips, her body tilted forward a few degrees and nearly over the desk.

Leaning back any further would likely collapse the chair, and could be seen as a sign of weakness; Shoto leaned forward instead, a move that would force her to move backward, putting her again on the defensive, whether she noticed it consciously or not.

"Regardless of whether I would be qualified or not, I simply don't see why I have to be the one to make time out of my very intensive schedule, for the benefit of students who were too busy wasting their time instead of studying, and are now reaping the natural consequences of their actions." Shoto made sure to slip a bit of coolness into his voice this time, like when Natsuo was at his most distant, mere seconds away from completely disconnecting from whatever reality Father was insisting he reside in.

Earlobes's frown intensified at Shoto's words, but she didn't speak immediately. Or move, which Shoto was slightly more concerned about the longer she spent not doing either.

"Yo, Midoriya!" She turned her head suddenly to call over her shoulder, loud and intensely jarring.

Shoto kept his jolt to the part of his body still hidden under the table and did sigh quietly when Midoriya visibly perked up, even from across the room, and quickly headed their way.

"Hi, Jiro-san!" Midoriya said shyly, and she nodded at him, adding a casual, "Just Jiro is fine, Midoriya." Her hands—Shoto noted irritably—were again on her hips.

"Hi, Todoroki-kun!" the boy said next, his mossy-green curls flopping up and down slightly as he bounced up and down in his enthusiasm.

Despite the unwelcome conversation happening before him, Shoto felt a smile tug at his lips and gave into it as he quietly returned the greeting.

"You're coming to the study group for sure, right Midoriya?" 'Jiro' broke in casually. Shoto narrowed his eyes at her, getting a feeling he knew where this was going.

"Yes?" Midoriya asked, puzzled. "You asked me earlier? Did… did we change the time? Only like I said, I only have Wednesday off this week because I already promised my mom I'd help her out, and I'd hatetogobackonmyword—"

"No, no, it's fine," Jiro hurried to reassure him before he could tumble off into a mumbled panic. Shoto had been about to do the same and felt mild surprise at the knowledge that this classmate, whose name he hadn't even remembered, knew Midoriya well enough to know that about him. Perhaps remembering things about people wasn't that difficult after all? Maybe, if he applied the way he recalled people's quirks to remembering other things, such as their name and likes and dislikes—

It felt like a momentous idea, somehow. Shoto gave up on the slouching and sat up straight, his hand reaching into his desk for a blank notebook to scratch out a vague plan on, when he heard the words:

"—So having Todoroki there would be great, wouldn't it?"

Midoriya beamed at Jiro, then Shoto, who forgot all about his incredible epiphany and really did level a glare at the meddling girl, this time. That was just playing dirty, using Midoriya's smile like that. Jiro's answering smile was sly, and very smug with the knowledge that she had definitely won this round.

"You're coming, Todoroki-kun? That's great! We could really use the help, I know you get great grades in Math—"

"Actually, I already made plans," Shoto blurted out, his mouth moving before he could really think of what he was saying. Midoriya paused, mouth open mid-word, and Shoto quickly finished with a desperate, "…with Shoji, and. Tokoyami. Sorry."

Oh, wow. That was just… spectacular. Shoto desperately turned his head to look for Shoji, hoping, somehow, that the other boy would back him up—

"Yeah, sorry about that, Midoriya," a wonderfully deep voice spoke up. Shoto kept his elation buried behind vague interest, and mentally apologized to Midoriya. As much as he enjoyed his budding friendship with the boy, some things simply could not be allowed to happen. "Todoroki's already promised to come over to our place to help out. You can join us if you like, I've got the room," Shoji added, and the indecision that had crept onto Midoriya's face disappeared instantly.

"Oh, could I?" Midoriya asked, delight in his voice; it turned woeful in the next instant, his smile dropping as he recalled, "Oh, but I already promised Jiro-san—"

"Nevermind, Midori," Jiro said, something odd about her deep and sudden resignation, even as Midoriya flushed pink at the nickname. Shoto eyed her, wondering, and raised his eyebrows as she met his and rolled hers, looking exasperated.

"You are the densest person I have have ever had the misfortune of meeting, which is saying something, because I know Kaminari. You two deserve each other. No hard feelings, Midori, we'll manage without you. Have a good study session."

Without another word, she walked away, fingers of a raised hand wiggling her goodbye. Shoto watched her go, frowning to himself.

How odd. What in the world had that been about?

"So about this study session I didn't realize I had volunteered for," Shoji broke in dryly, and Shoto abruptly realized what he had done.

A study session, with Shoji and Midoriya and, apparently, Tokoyami—who was approaching, black crest raised high in the absence of eyebrows—at Shoji's house.

This was bound to turn out wonderfully.

(It did, in fact, turn out wonderfully. Shoto left Shoji's house the next day, a container of left-over food in his bag, and marveled at the feeling of knowing that friends were something you could actively attempt to make, and not something you had to wait—and hope you were lucky enough—to have.)


	17. Here Comes the Sun

Warning: suicidal thoughts, some self-harm. In case I've missed something and you think you might be triggered at any point, please refer to the warnings in the first chapter. And to be safe, it might be best to constantly keep in mind that Shoto is a slightly dramatic, traumatized teenager and a very unreliable narrator.  
This chapter also contains a little silliness and concerned Good Adults, so it's not all angst.

* * *

Shoto kicked the ground beneath his feet, lightly, and resisted the urge to sigh aloud.

The final exam had been… not at all like he had expected—especially considering that he, along with his classmates, had been expecting towering metal constructs, and had instead been met with their powerful, pro-hero _teachers_.

When it was announced that he would be paired with Yaoyorozu, to fight against Aizawa-sensei, Shoto had been apprehensive about their chances, because even weighed down by a considerable handicap, Sensei was no low-level thug. Still, despite that apprehension, Shoto's first instinct had actually been relief—because All Might had been in that line up, and the thought of going up against the Number One, when he was so far from ready, had nearly paralyzed him for a few endless seconds.

Some of the relief must have carried over into his overall mindset because it didn't occur to Shoto, until they were already at the site where they would be tested, that he should have taken advantage of the short drive to the facility to discuss plans with Yaoyorozu. This mistake had quickly become apparent, as the announcing of the start of their battle had immediately shown him another obstacle in their potential path to winning:

_Shoto paused, and looked at his fellow recommendation student incredulously. _

_"What do you mean, you don't have a plan? Don't be ridiculous, of course you have a plan. I'm just throwing out ideas to get us moving; nothing I say needs to be set in stone. We don't have a lot of time, so I'm sorry to be harsh, but I'd appreciate it if you could get to it already."_

_Her flinch still made him slightly guilty, which in turn annoyed him further, as he had already apologized and the clock was tick-tick-ticking. _

_Giving Sensei the time to ambush them like this was like asking to be curb-stomped._

_"I…" Yaoyorozu stopped, looking tearful and terribly uncertain, and Shoto deliberately didn't roll his eyes like he wanted to. Instead, he loosened the muscles in his face and attempted to be kind._

_It probably came off as brisk more than anything, in the end, but if Yaoyorozu wanted a soft touch, she would have to wait until after the exam to find it. "I know you can do this, Yaoyorozu. You're smart and you're capable, and if you have an idea, I know it'll be a good one. Stop hesitating and tell me what you're thinking, before we run out of time."_

_"Well said," came a voice above their heads, and then they really were out of time._

The exam had gone well, in the end. Yaoyorozu came through, and they managed to trap Sensei in the tight constraints of his own capture scarf—even if it had been an imitation made by Yaoyorozu's quirk, Creation, and had had a different function.

They had passed, and Yaoyorozu had been moved to tears by Sensei's honest compliments of her abilities. They had then gone back to wait with the other students for the exams to end.

And that left Shoto, sitting on the curb outside of the building holding the examiners and the viewing stations, chewing the inside of his cheek nearly bloody over the images that kept sneaking across his mind's eye:

_Sensei, leaping backward. Shoto, white strands flying about him, his fire sparking to life in his hand. Shoto, sending that fire streaming towards Sensei, who was subsequently caught by the hardening material of the imitation-capture weapon._

The fire was what had him staring at the ground and biting on the uncomfortable feeling that wouldn't stop trying to migrate from his stomach to his chest, and back again.

He had used his fire in combat, again. Ever since Hosu, Shoto had considered using his fire during training at home, or during Foundational Hero Studies; but each time, he had flinched away from using it, the thought still too unsettling, the memories too raw.

Using his fire to protect himself and others, and against some who deserved it, was one thing; using his fire against someone who he happened to strongly respect—and tentatively enjoy being around—was another. But Yaoyorozu had been counting on him; Shoto had done what he needed to do, knowing that if he hesitated, they would fail, and it would not be only his failure that he would have to shoulder.

He flexed the muscles of his left arm, watching them shift the clothing hiding them from view, and pondered the mysteries of quirks, and their origins, and the lengths people would go to to obtain them—and what lengths he would have to go to to be rid of his own, if he thought such a thing were truly possible.

"What's got you thinking so deeply out here, little listener?" a loud voice boomed, sounding almost directly by his ear, and with a yelp, Shoto fell onto his side and into a roll, his heartbeat beginning to thunder in his ears as adrenaline levels rose—

"Whoa whoa whoa, little—Todoroki-kun! It's just your good ol' English teacher, Present Mic! Mic-sensei! Kid, relax, I'm getting jittery just looking at you."

Looking up at the man staring down at him in apparent concern from behind large sunglasses, Shoto slowly pulled himself to his feet, too stunned to feel embarrassed.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, too surprised to avoid his usual blunt lack of social awareness. Mic-sensei pressed his hand to his heart and leaned back, making a 'pew' noise with his mouth that seemed to serve no purpose, and was also confusing.

"You do have a way with words, young listener! Can't a man look for a _peaceful stretch of ground without any creeping, slithering things running across it, _without getting the third-degree?"

Shoto understood about… one-third of that sentence, but he nodded, because Mic-sensei was his teacher and also an adult, and it was generally safe to just agree in this type of situation.

Mic-sensei's glasses, which had slipped down his nose, revealed gleaming, green-ringed irises in eyes that squinted happily at his acquiescence. He then plopped himself onto the ground, on a raised concrete block, and gestured at Shoto to sit down again. Shoto did so, slowly, wondering what exactly was happening here.

He and his English teacher didn't interact much. English class verged on the edge of too much for him to handle, most days, with its loudness and constant engaging of his students from Mic-sensei, who was demanding even when he wasn't trying. Shoto wouldn't admit it if it killed him (mostly because he got the feeling it would kill Mic-sensei), but he had been kind of going out of his way to avoid the loud man.

Looking at him now, with crazily-styled hair spiking up out of his head like an exclamation point, his bright-colored eyes staring happily into the distance and an unfamiliar tune hummed under his breath, Shoto thought that maybe he had been a little too hasty in his avoidance.

The man seemed… diminished, somehow, sitting like this with Shoto, on the ground outside the building. He wasn't lesser by any means, but he was definitely quieter, the whole of his body seeming to settle into the comfortable silence that had fallen between them. It made him more approachable, more… human, and Shoto found himself relaxing, too, into the peacefulness of it.

"You doing all right, kid?" the man asked, after a few more moments of silence had passed.

Shoto moved his eyes away from an ant that was laboriously making its way between his feet and looked to his right, puzzled. "…Yes? Should I not be?"

A quick grin was his answer, as well as a shake of a blond head. "Not at all! It's just that I saw your fight with Shota—ah, Eraserhead. That was something, huh."

It could have been a random comment. Shoto fisted his right hand and pulled it into his lap, resisting the urge to begin scratching at his left side in a move that, he realized with some surprise, he hadn't felt the urge to do for some time now.

It could have been a random comment… but Shoto felt, somehow, that it hadn't been, and chose to take it as such.

"I wouldn't have hurt him," he said, the words coming out thickly, distant and detached, when he didn't feel anything of the sort. "I'm not as proficient in the left side of my quirk as I am with my right, but that doesn't mean… I wouldn't have hurt him."

"Kid… that wasn't what I—"

Shoto stared down at his lap, felt the tingling running from his toes and up through the scarred skin surrounding his eye, and unclenched his hand—wandering fingers quickly finding purchase, and digging deep.

"I would rather kill myself than hurt someone—someone who didn't deserve it—with the left side of my power," he said over Mic-sensei's words, feeling something inside himself settle as he said it. The tingling grew less pronounced, even, and Shoto felt the words latch onto a part of himself that he had failed to acknowledge before now, and cling.

Death would be preferable, when he really thought about it. Of course, he would do his absolute best to ensure that that eventuality never came to pass, but… even then. The knowledge that he had the resolve to do what it would take to keep the people around him safe—safe from the danger his very nature represented—was… good.

Shoto drew his nails sharply down his side and thought: _Very_ _good. _

"Hey!" a voice snapped. Shoto looked up, where the words had come from, and leaned back in surprise.

Mic-sensei stood in front of him, hands on his hips, a very uncharacteristic frown pulling at his ever-smiling mouth. His sunglasses were nowhere in sight, and even with the sun blocked by his very tall form (something Shoto had never really noticed before now: Mic-sensei was very, very tall), it did nothing to detract from the brightness of his eyes, and the way his eyebrows were pulled together over them. Shoto felt the bizarre sight jar him out of his thoughts, and he wondered how he hadn't noticed the man standing up.

"I don't want to hear that from you, boyo. That's… you have issues with your quirk, okay, I understand, you're not the first and you won't be the last, but…"

Mic-sensei ran a hand up his hair, smoothing it but not crushing it, and made a frustrated noise. He began pacing in front of Shoto, who followed him with his eyes, hesitantly attempting to put together what had his teacher in such an unexpected state.

Then Mic-sensei spun around, something in his face settling into determined lines, and Shoto straightened shoulders that had begun to bend, and swallowed around an unexpected twinge of nervousness.

Something about Mic-sensei, when he was like this, really reminded Shoto of the fact that his teachers—all of them, come to think of it—were pro-heroes, with the power to back up the title.

Mic-sensei leaned down, and Shoto didn't startle at the hands that dropped to his shoulders, only because they had been so obviously telegraphed that he hadn't even thought to.

"Promise me something, Todoroki-kun," Mic-sensei said, somber and unsmiling, and Shoto nodded before he even stopped to think.

"You—aw, kid, you really need to think before agreeing to stuff, you know? At least hear the person out first, okay? But that's not what I want you to promise, so listen:

"If there ever comes a time when you lose control of your quirk—your fire, which I'm guessing is the real problem here—I want you to promise me that you'll go to someone, anyone. Me, preferably, or Shot—your homeroom teacher, who I know for a fact will be able to talk you through what happened, and talk you down if the need arises."

He had nodded his promise, not-quite a binding agreement without being verbal, but one he wasn't going to back down from. Still, what his teacher was saying wasn't quite making sense in his mind, and Shoto guessed that was written pretty much all over his face, as Mic-sensei took one closer look at it—eyes jumping from one point to the next—before sighing.

"Don't worry about the details, all right? I just want you to promise that you will, before anything else."

Shoto, even though he was still confused, could tell that this meant a lot to the man with the power to raise his voice to deafening levels, but who was here, in front of Shoto, talking so quietly and softly. So he nodded, again, and this time added a verbal oath:

"I will, I promise."

Mic-sensei sighed, an explosive exhalation of air, and the lines of his body melted in relief. The hands on his shoulders tightened momentarily, then released, and Mic-sensei plopped himself back down onto the concrete block beside Shoto. Shoto himself placed a hand on his left shoulder, squeezing gently, and marveled at the way this touch, too, hadn't felt like burning.

"WHEW, MY GOODNESS!" Shoto leaned away from the words, eyebrows wrinkling at the reemergence of the hated volume. "Whoops, sorry, my bad, I'm just so relieved that—anyway."

Leaving the conclusion to that confusing sentence up in the air, Mic-sensei stretched his arms above his head and yawned, picked up his quiet humming again, and dropped the conversation without further comment.

Shoto mentally shrugged the weirdness away, and settled his weight on the hands he stretched out behind him, squinting at the force of the direct sunlight above.

Something dark slipped down over his eyes, and Shoto tilted his head onto his right shoulder and stared at Mic-sensei through the dark lenses of his new sunglasses.

"How do I look?" he asked, instead of questioning it. The warmth of the sun, his new resolution and the comfort of quiet, undemanding company, was making him feel mellow and pleasantly relaxed. It brought out the small side of him that enjoyed humor and jokes, and being the one to deliver both.

Mic-sensei gave him a lopsided, secretive smile, and whispered: "You look like a mini-me, kid. I love it."

The words joined the pleasant humming underneath his skin, and Shoto grinned back, uncaring whether it was inappropriate to be joking like this, with an adult who had considerable power over his future.

"Are you corrupting my student, Hizashi?" a deep voice intoned from behind Shoto's head. Shoto tilted it back even further, letting the glasses tip precariously over his eyes, and stared up at his dark-eyed teacher.

"Hi, Sensei," Shoto said casually. The warmth that had started from the slope of his shoulders and had spread to the rest of his body moved up to his ears, turning them red even as he said, as cheekily as he dared: "Like my new look?"

His answer came in the form of fingers flicking his nose, and Shoto wrinkled it and sat forward, so he could turn around and (though he barely dared think the thought) pout at his teacher.

"Ow?" he said, trying the word on for size.

(His heart pounded, frantically beating at the bones caging it in as of to say: whatareyoudoingwhatareyoudoingwhatAREYOUDOING_YOUIDIOT_!

But... This was Aizawa-sensei, who wouldn't... he wouldn't get angry, at a little playfulness. Aizawa-sensei was different from most adults: strangely nice, with a weird sense of humor. Patient. Kind. And Mic-sensei was here, too, the funny man who was also weirdly nice... So he wouldn't, he wouldn't—)

The look he got was all raised eyebrows, and the hand that tousled his hair, almost knocking the glasses off his nose and sending his hair flying in all directions, felt nearly… indulgent. The lazy grin, caught in the lenses covering his eyes, settled the excited thumping in his chest, and brought a matching grin to his face.

"Stop lazying about, brat. It's time to announce the results. Hizashi, get off your ass and stop being a bad influence, you're a disgrace."

Exchanging another secretive look with the man beside him as Shoto went to return the sunglasses ("Keep them," Mic-sensei said with a grin, and Shoto didn't argue), Shoto let Mic-sensei's large hand wrap around his own and pull him to his feet.

The sun was shining, he had passed his exams and his fire lay dormant within his left side, the itch running over it long forgotten.


	18. Depth Over Distance

Warning: the usual warnings and a flashback, plus Todoroki Enji, being an emotionally abusive, and just abusive in general, asshole.

Also with cameos from Dadmight, Yamadad, and the ever-present Dadzawa. Just the whole Dad Gang, basically.  
(Sorry, I've been lazy about updating here. To everyone who's been reading this, thank you! 3)

* * *

The door to the first year teacher's lounge was surprisingly… average.

Shoto paused in front of it to look up, eyes scanning the upper lines of the plain doorframe. Those eyes moved, tracing dull metal and peeling gray paint, before finally dropping down to the dented silver doorknob. He frowned, then, oddly aggravated. They had money coming out of their ears in this academy; was it so expensive, to get a marginally-decent looking doorway to mark the room intended for their mostly pro-hero staff?

It was the beginning of July, and summer was nearly in full swing. With the rainy season still stubbornly dousing dreams of beaches and idyllic summer days—leading to more cloudy skies than not and thick, muggy air that felt like struggling through lukewarm soup when you had to be out in it—even the thought of scorching-hot weather seemed like a picnic.

On this particularly wet, muggy day, two weeks before the training camp, Shoto had decided, on a whim, that today was the day he would attempt to get permission to use the school's training rooms.

Asking for things from adults had never come easily to Shoto; just a few months ago, asking an adult for something outside of his immediate needs wouldn't have even occurred to him. In this case, his desire to ask about the training rooms had warred with his instinctive recoil from the mere thought of it, for nearly a month... before circumstances had finally forced his hand. After a week of torturous daily sessions with Endeavor that was finally (thankfully) cut short in favor of not giving them both heatstroke, Shoto had decided that enough was enough: the temperature in UA's state-of-the-art training rooms was controlled by a central heating system all year 'round; there was privacy, convenience, and the chance to add something new to his routine; there would, most importantly, be no Endeavor; and other than his reluctance, he had no concrete excuse for not asking.

That had led him here, after the bell had rung for the lunch break, standing in front of the drab, uninspiring door to the teacher's lounge. Shoto looked at the door mistrustfully, and the doorknob even more so. Would it break if he touched it? Honestly, it looked a good squeeze away from imploding. If they gave so little care for appearances that _this_ had somehow passed muster, what were the odds that the… what was that saying Natsuo had enjoyed throwing about, that always seemed to inexplicably enrage Father? 'The carpet matched the drapes', or some such?

Reassuring himself that there was no way that could be the case—just, no, even the possibility was ridiculous, surely—Shoto finally knocked on the door, then turned the knob at the faint, "Come in!" he received in reply.

He walked into the room, and was absolutely appalled to discover that his fears had not only been accurate, but that the situation was considerably worse than he'd anticipated.

The room he walked into was spacious, yes: nearly twice the size of 1-A's classroom, it had the same wall of windows on one side, and a line of waist-level shelving units lining the other. It seemed well-lit, sure, on account of the windows: but on days with no sunlight, and on long evenings full of squinting at papers, the evenly-spaced lines of florescent lights hinted at ugly, unnatural lighting as the norm. The desks were utilitarian metal in an off-gray with hideous pool table-green tops, the chairs looked cheap and uncomfortable, and the room had an overall feeling of being not only unwelcoming, but created for the sole purpose of making sure people didn't stay in it for too long. Aside from the size difference, Shoto could easily have walked into the local tax office. It was annoying to think that Father was paying an astoundingly high tuition fee for a school that couldn't even be bothered to treat its employees the way they deserved.

Shoto imagined Aizawa-sensei, forced to hunch over the low, ugly gray desks stuck together in groups of four—piled high with paperwork and folders, haphazardly stacked together—with his already-tired eyes hurting from the bad lighting and his terrible workload... and felt his frown turn to a scowl.

This could not be allowed to stand. Shoto resolved to speak to Father about this immediately, even if he had to grovel or find some ridiculous excuse to make the necessary changes happen.

For starters, an espresso machine would have to be installed, post-haste. Shoto wasn't a complete fan of coffee himself, but when you needed to wake up quickly, there was nothing quite like it. The only thing worse than bad tea was bad coffee, so he should—

"Woo-hoo, little man, what's gone and turned your smile upside down?"

Shoto jolted, tensing at the voice that had come out of his blind spot (he really, really hated when people did that), but quickly relaxed when he realized who had spoken.

He turned his head and craned his neck upwards, saying agreeably: "Good afternoon, Mic-sensei."

Mic-sensei beamed down at him. His customary sunglasses rested on his forehead, and he pushed them a little higher as he inclined his upper body sideways, till he was low enough to look up at Shoto—which Shoto's neck definitely appreciated, even if the position made the man look even more comical than usual.

"Yo, Todoroki-kun! What's up? What was that serious face all about?"

Shoto felt his mouth quirk up, and let it. Mic-sensei made it very difficult to feel anything but mild amusement when he was around; even when he was loud, whatever irritation Shoto felt these days was quick to pass. He smiled, and let that easy emotion take the place of the wriggling feeling erupting under his skin from the eyes he had felt latch onto him as soon as he entered the room. "Nothing really, Mic-sensei. But I did have a question I needed to ask—have you seen Aizawa-sensei?"

Mic-sensei put a hand on Shoto's shoulder and steered him down the middle of the first line of desks (he tensed at the touch, but was proud of himself for not giving into his first instinct to twitch away from it). Shoto kept his eyes fixed on Mic-sensei's face as he talked, determined not to make eye-contact with the other teachers he had marked upon entering the room:

Midnight-sensei, who was sitting on a desk, provocatively leaning over Snipe-sensei in a way Shoto felt was rather inappropriate in a work setting, but made it very easy to avoid eye-contact with her; the pro-hero Powerloader (who, if Shoto wasn't mistaken, was in charge of class 1-E?), who was attempting to eat some kind of cup-ramen while clicking away at his computer and occasionally glancing up at their moving forms; and a blond, nearly skeletal man, who had looked up when Shoto entered the room and hadn't taken his eyes off of him since.

"—I mean, you can try if you want, but I think it would probably be best if we see if I can help you instead."

Shoto nodded automatically, then blinked when they stopped before a desk, half-way down the length of the room. What had he just agreed to—

...Oh. He looked down, at the faded-blue, lumpy looking couch pushed under the windows across from where they stood, and pondered the dilemma presented to him by the bright yellow sleeping bag lying on it.

"I see," Shoto said slowly, and quietly, as the words Mic-sensei had been saying filtered into his head.

"Yeah," the man said, looking down at Shoto with amusement. He pulled out a chair from the desk closest to the yellow caterpillar and urged Shoto into it. "This is his desk, so go ahead and sit. I can't promise I'll be able to help you out, but I'll see what I can do, okay?"

He could wait to ask Sensei, but…

He sat, and aimed a considering look at his sleeping teacher. From what little he had managed to glean of the enigmatic man's way of thinking, Shoto could extrapolate that Aizawa-sensei would respect the decision made by whatever teacher he asked—even if that teacher happed to be Midnight-sensei, who was even now laughing as she and her x-rated hero suit were elbowed away from a protesting Snipe-sensei. Sensei had never punished initiative, and Shoto imagined that, short of trying to get an 'okay' from a teacher after already getting a 'no' from someone else, he wouldn't be risking bringing Sensei's wrath down on his head by asking someone else for permission.

Mic-sensei it was, then.

Shoto turned the revolving seat slightly to the side with a light push of his foot, and grimaced at the resulting squeak. The general state of this room was just, awful. He _would_ be resolving this, as soon as he got home tonight.

"I was wondering," he began, then paused, biting his lip lightly as he looked to the desk on his right. How to phrase it for maximum effect? Obviously, he was a student with a good reputation and decent grades, so it wasn't like granting his request would be a risk; still, it wasn't as if he were suffering from a lack of resources and an inability to practice at home, so it would probably seem quite odd that he was asking for—

A finger poked his cheek, drawing his gaze away from neatly arranged files, and made him jerk his head around. His hand instinctively went to the point of contact, and he blinked up at a grinning Mic-sensei.

"Um," he began intelligently, confused. "…What was that for?"

"You take everything too seriously, boyo!" came the enthusiastic—and unhelpful—answer. Thankfully, Mic-sensei continued, leaning forward in the chair he had pulled out from the near-by desk, saying: "Don't think so hard about it, okay? I'm not gonna get mad at you, or turn down a request without a really good reason. And besides, you don't know until you try, right?"

_So_ not true… but Shoto didn't say that, because that wasn't something Mic-sensei needed to hear (or should be hearing, anyway), and because a memory had just popped into his head:

_"A teacher's purpose is to teach, and to help create a learning environment where their pupils feel... safe. To… help."_

His own words, even; far be it from him to ignore them.

So Shoto tilted his chin up, made eye-contact, and took the plunge.

"I would like to request access to the training facilities for personal use," he said. "I have no real preference as to the size, only a request for the room itself to be resistant to extreme temperatures, or fire-retardant, at the very least. I understand that this is an unusual request, and I would also understand if you feel obligated to reject it."

He said all of this matter-of-factly and without real inflection; taking the plunge was all well and good, but there was nothing wrong with applying a safety-net, in the form of emotional detachment. Mic-sensei looked at him for a moment, eyes searching, and Shoto did his best to keep his expression bland in a way that said: _Nothing to see here. Look somewhere else._

(Shoto had found, over the years, that showing interest in something was a quick way to lose it. It had only taken one, two neighborhood children and a classmate inexplicably disappearing, before Shoto realized what was going on, and discovered the safety in distance.

Shoto was not a slow learner—and what he learned, he did not forget.)

"And what would you be doing there, if I granted permission?" Mic-sensei asked, with no real inflection, either, and after a moment of searching the man's eyes and face in vain for tells, Shoto had the dawning realization that that was what he must sound like when_ he_ was putting up a blank mask. It was a shockingly disconcerting thing to have directed at yourself, and it left Shoto oddly shaken.

"Training," Shoto said promptly, his tongue loosened by his loss of equilibrium. "Obviously, this is something I could easily manage in my own home, so it is not something of dire necessity. However, if possible, I would like to utilize my free time as appropriately and in as worthwhile a manner as I can, and it occurred to me that one way to do that would be to spend a few hours after school using the facilities here."

That wasn't the whole truth, of course, but there was enough there to make it believable. Shoto held his breath, ignored the hints of guilt at his deception, and hoped that the contemplative look on Mic-sensei's face wasn't him considering how best to screw Shoto over.

"Sounds fair," Mic-sensei said eventually. He then clapped both hands on his knees with a quick exhalation of breath, and smiled. "Shota will doubtless ask you to let him know when you're going to use it, and he might ask for you to find a teacher to supervise, but I can't see any reason to reject your request."

Shoto, who had been drawing a line into his wrist with his nail during the short wait, slowly let his hand drop, feeling uncomfortable at the easy reply.

...That was it?

"And anyway, you aren't the first student who's asked," Mic-sensei added, and Shoto nodded slightly, reassured. Having a precedent made a lot more sense than a teacher, with whom he had only briefly interacted with outside regular classes, agreeing to his request on trust alone. Mic-sensei continued, "It's going to have to wait till after the training camp, I'm afraid, as the training rooms are almost completely booked until mid-August, but you can consider yourself officially approved to use them!"

"Is that all you needed?" he asked, and Shoto nodded, grabbing onto the back of the chair to support himself as he went to rise to his feet, relieved to be done.

That had gone considerably better than he had expected. Now all he had to do was get out of here and away from the eyes boring holes into the back of his head, poking at the lizard part of his brain that was always alert to danger, and was even now blaring alarm bells—

Mic-sensei threw an open palm out in front of him before he could stand completely, and Shoto froze in an odd position, a few centimeters above his seat. His legs strained, but some things were as deeply ingrained in his body as the need to breathe: large hands flying anywhere near his body would always incite his freeze or fight instinct, and in this case, thankfully, his body had chosen to freeze.

Mic-sensei reached over to his desk and grabbed a dark-blue cloth bag Shoto hadn't really noticed; it had a bright-yellow cockateel on its front, one that was wearing a pair of sunglasses. Shoto tilted his head to follow its path as Mic-sensei pulled it onto his lap, feeling a twinge of familiarity.

That was forgotten a moment later, as the man began pulling out what were obviously lunch boxes, wrapped in various colorful cloths.

"Have you eaten?" Mic-sensei asked. He began unwrapping three, various-sized boxes, and Shoto abruptly realized that it was currently the lunch period, and subsequently his teachers' precious time off from their, more often than not, intractable students.

Shoto immediately stood (and was relieved to give his tired thighs a break from their unplanned workout) and began pushing the chair back into the desk. He started to say: "I'm so sorry, Sensei, I completely forgot you were on break—"

—when the chair was pulled out of his grip, and he was then pushed firmly back into it. He looked up, tense and startled, and went crosseyed as he tried to look at the finger being pointed very near the tip of his nose.

"Sit," Mic-sensei demanded. "If I wanted you to leave, I would have said so. I asked if you'd eaten." The finger tapped him on the nose, once, in what felt like encouragement, before withdrawing.

Surprised into honestly, Shoto admitted, "No. I didn't feel like eating today."

Last night's training had come a little too soon after he had eaten, and even the following day, long after the back of his throat had stopped stinging from stomach acid, the idea of food had been strongly unappealing. His stomach hadn't been agreeing with this for the past few hours, sadly, but Shoto was an old-hat at ignoring the obnoxious demands of his body.

Mic-sensei tilted his head at him, looking suddenly worried. "At all?" he asked, and Shoto flinched without meaning to; he hunched into his shoulders, with the realization that he definitely should not have said that. He then shrugged in lieu of a verbal answer, and proceeded to stare fixedly out the window.

It had started raining. The thick, heavy cloud cover from this morning had screamed of heavy showers, but the weather report had only given it a thirty-percent chance, and Shoto hadn't bothered to bring an umbrella. He didn't really need one, anyway, as he didn't have to worry about things like making it to the station or bus without getting soaked, but it did make the view outside the window a less-than-pleasant one. The gray-scale world outside the glass also provided little in the way of a good distraction from the hard stare he could feel on the right side of his face.

"…You do that a lot, kid?" a hoarse voice asked, and Shoto whipped his head in the direction of the couch, where the voice had originated. The yellow caterpillar wiggled and shifted, and with a quiet ziiiip, the top opened enough to show Aizawa-sensei's tired face. The bag soon unzipped the rest of the way, and a few seconds later, Sensei's upper body was out of the bag and sitting up, his mouth opening in a big yawn as he stretched his arms above his head.

"Good… morning, Sensei," Shoto said, choosing not to answer. Hopefully, Sensei was tired enough he would let the question slide. "Do you always sleep during your break times?"

"Do you always deflect questions you don't want to answer by asking another question?"

Sensei pulled his legs up to crisscross on top of the couch and tugged at the open sleeping bag to cover them. He then rested his elbows on his knees, brought his hands together in front of his chin, and proceeded to stare pointedly at Shoto from behind loose strands of black hair.

Caught, and feeling a sudden resurgence of lingering uncertainty and disconcertion, Shoto instinctively fell back on practiced behavior that had never failed to work: he pressed his palms flat on top of his thighs, straightened his back and spine, and folded his torso forward into a low, low bow. It had the double effect of showing his regret and allowing him to break eye contact as he said, haltingly, "I apologize if I came off as rude or impertinent, Aizawa-sensei. Please allow me to offer you my sincerest apologies, and to assure you that it will not happen again."

_(Father was folding his arms across his chest, his angry eyes glaring down at Shoto from where he stood, feet parted at shoulder level._

_Shoto knew this, because he had been here, many, many times—so many times, in fact, that even with his eyes fixed unseeingly into the distance, he could tell the exact expression on Father's face and the basic pattern of the words that would next be falling out of his mouth._

_"Your behavior has been absolutely dreadful. What do you have to say for yourself?" Shoto mockingly followed along with the words in his mind, and managed not to roll his eyes as the man continued: "Your terrible behavior reflects badly not only on you, but on the Todoroki Family as a whole. You are a representative of this family, of myself, and any behavior that demeans your position as that representative demeans all of us. If you continue to fail to maintain the top position in your class, your teachers, your peers and their families will begin to question the validity of my position as a high-ranking hero. Is that what you want?"_

_His knees and feet protested being pressed into the tatami; his back and shoulders ached from having to hold himself in perfect form; and in approximately fifteen-seconds, Father would be expecting him to press his open palms against the floor, fingers pointing together to make a V, and bow until his forehead, too, pressed into fresh-smelling straw—the _dogeza_, the ultimate sign of repentance._

_This, too, was a part of the song and dance, and while the mere thought of it sent the beginnings of humiliation slicing through his quaking organs, Shoto welcomed the opportunity to make as many disgusted faces as he liked without being seen, and having to suffer for it._

_"No, Father," Shoto replied in a monotone, wishing this charade would be over with already, wishing (and immediately retracting the wish) that Endeavor had been the one to read his report card._

_"Then what do you have to say for yourself, boy?")_

He had shown his regret, as well as his willingness to comply with punishment, in one simple move. If this were Father, this was where he would be ordered to stand outside on the balcony or in the front yard, no matter the weather or temperature outside, for the next few hours—with the humiliating (and somehow hurtful, every single time, without fail) parting shot that, if he was going to insist on being a child, he could go show that side of himself to the rest of the world and spare his family from having to witness it. With Aizawa-sensei and the handful of other teachers Shoto had very little experience with, there was an empty space in his future where that scenario would normally be, and the thought of that uncertainty was chilling.

A dead silence had fallen over the space surrounding him… and around the large room as a whole, Shoto realized suddenly, with a dread that built with each second his apology went unanswered.

A rustling sound began, sometime later, quickly followed by the sound of scraping chairs and footsteps in the distance. Shoto strained to hear what was happening and caught the sound of hushed voices, more than one, though he couldn't make out who they belonged to or what they were saying. Closer to his bowed head, there was the sound of one, two footsteps, and then there was a hand on his back. Shoto dug his fingernails into his thighs and fought not to flinch at the unexpected contact, though he wasn't able to avoid the way every muscle in his back went taut with tension. His eyes had closed when he bowed, but he opened them now, afraid of the images forcing themselves over the wavering view of his blue uniform pants, afraid of how anxiety was tearing its way past his mental walls and through his overwrought nerve-endings.

It worked... until it didn't. And Shoto's world became aching joints and straw, humiliation and scathing words… and time lost all meaning.

"Todoroki," a deep voice said quietly, a short eternity later, from just above his head. There was something on his back—a dull weight that fit in with the rest of his heavy body—which he only really noticed when it moved to his head, stayed for a beat, then moved down to his shoulders and began to pull upwards. Shoto locked his muscles and stubbornly resisted the motion, his breath catching where he had been so careful to keep it even. He couldn't risk movement: Father was very clear on the protocols he was to follow during discipline, and if he moved before Father gave him the okay… he would look at Shoto like he was the scum beneath his shoe, and the words that would fall out of Father's mouth for his transgression would tear him down, piece by piece, until the person that stepped outside to wait out the lonely hours wouldn't be a person at all: just a container, filled to the brim with all the terribly, awfully, painfully true words that had been stuffed inside it.

If this was a test, and Shoto moved… If this was a test, and Father saw Shoto moving, he would—

"Hey, hey, hey," a different voice said, the words drifting slowly into Shoto's ears, as if traveling through water. "it's okay kiddo, you don't gotta… you don't have to do that, okay? Shota, can you…"

The odd cadence of the words pulled a confused, shuddering breath out of Shoto's mouth. The words didn't match the pressing knowledge that Father had told him to _kneel_, so he was _kneeling_, because if he didn't…

…But he wasn't kneeling. Shoto blinked, rapidly, then squeezed his eyes tightly shut when it failed to make the world stop wobbling. When he opened his eyes again, after a few deep breaths, Shoto became suddenly aware of the hands on his shoulders (points of heat that he hadn't really been feeling), the two—no, three—separate breathing patterns in his immediate vicinity, of the pain his back and neck from hunching over, and… and the knowledge that he was not, in fact, kneeling, or even at home—and certainly not anywhere near Father and his preferred methods of discipline.

Humiliation of a different kind bloomed, hot and bright, and Shoto abruptly sat up, dislodging the hands on his shoulders in the process. He could feel his face heating from the middle of his chest to all the way up the outline of his ears, and everything burned.

"I had problems with my stomach last night, so I didn't feel like eating," Shoto said quickly, his eyes fixed on the fingers he was wringing in his lap. Bringing back the previous discussion would, hopefully, discourage anyone from commenting on his… lapse.

"But I have lunch, so if I get hungry during my break I'll eat some, I promise. May I... go? ...Please?"

A paper cup, full of green liquid that was obviously tea, was thrust into his line of sight. Startled, Shoto looked up, into bright blue eyes—sunken so deeply in their sockets as to be cast in shadow—and an incredibly kind smile.

"Here you are, my boy," the man said. "I thought you looked like you could use a hot drink." Shoto slowly looked down at the very, very big hands holding the cup, and carefully reached up to hold it. This didn't work terribly well, as his fingers were trembling badly, and in the end, Shoto was forced to decline the cup with a tight shake of his head and a near-silent, "No, thank you."

"Todoroki," a now-recognizable voice said. Reluctantly, Shoto made eye-contact with Aizawa-sensei (because that wasn't a voice you ignored) and immediately had to fight not to close his eyes against the blatant concern in them.

"You don't ever need to do that with us," Sensei began, gently at first, but his voice grew stern as he added: "No, I need you to look at me, Todoroki, this is important."

Over the sounds of Mic-sensei's hushed, "Shota, really—" Shoto opened eyes that had involuntarily shut, slowly, and bit down on the inside of his cheek to fight their stinging. Humiliation still sang brightly against his skin, and the words weren't quite managing to break past it.

The hand that cupped his jaw, however, did, and Shoto's body stilled at the contact, his eyes going wide. Aizawa-sensei looked firmly into his eyes, and said, with deep emphasis: "You do not, _ever_, have to do that with anyone here, in this school—or outside it, for that matter. If anyone asks you to, or implies that you should in any shape or form, you tell me, or Hizashi, or… All Might, and they'll have to answer to us. Do you understand?"

Swallowing proved difficult around the lump in his throat, but Shoto did anyway, in order to croak, "Yes, sir," in a rough voice that cracked on the last syllable. Something warm caressed his cheek, gently rubbing; Shoto bit again, harder, into his cheek, as he realized it was Sensei's thumb. Dark eyes held his own for a beat, before the line in Sensei's brow that Shoto hadn't even noticed smoothed out, and the hand on his jaw patted his cheek approvingly. A warm cup was gently placed into his left hand, and this time Shoto was able to hold it in his lap without his fingers overly-trembling around it. Sensei leaned back and dropped his hand, then, letting Shoto bring the cup to his lips and drink. The heat traveled down behind the slowly-cooling skin of his still-flushed throat, and Shoto was glad to have the chance to drop his eyes to it and attempt to regain control.

"This mine or yours, Hizashi?" He saw Sensei reach over Mic-sensei's head—ignoring the other man's annoyed grunt at the move as he ducked—in order to pick up a pack lunch, this one wrapped in a light green cloth with little kittens running around the edges.

"They're all mine, thank you," Mic-sensei replied, exasperated. He made a grab for the box, which Aizawa-sensei skillfully dodged. "But because I am a wonderful, awesome friend, I bring extra food for you and the other unfortunate individuals who can't cook for shi—iiiiiiip, for ships and…. and submarines." Sensei mocked the other man's slip up and bad attempt at covering for it, and soon the two were engaged in a good-natured argument. Shoto sipped his tea, and wondered if the change of topic had been deliberate; his mind said, _Yes_, and the drink warmed his body going all the way down.

"You may come to me as well, if anything is troubling you, young man," a rumbling voice said. Shoto flicked his eyes up, taking in what details he could see of the man, and inclined his head.

"I don't believe we've been introduced?" he asked politely, his eyes carefully focused on the large man's chin. Shoto's first impression of him was a kind, peaceful sort of individual, which was very surprising for his size… but Shoto had experienced kindness before, and knew well how quickly and unexpectedly it could flip to the true emotions hiding underneath. As nice as the man may seem, Shoto wasn't anywhere stupid or naive enough to be offering up his trust to complete strangers.

"Oh, I haven't, have I?" the man said, with a little laugh. He moved to the beat up couch, politely pushed the yellow sleeping bag aside, and slowly sat himself down on it with a quiet groan. Shoto scanned him again, more intently this time, from the emaciated body nearly swimming in its overlarge clothing, to the hand that pressed against the side of his torso, gently and carefully.

"I'm Toshinori Yagi! I am a part of administration here at UA, so we may occasionally run into each other! Most days you can find me here, or in the third and second year staff rooms on their respective floors."

Some kind of injury, or chronic illness, perhaps. It didn't look like one that was easy to deal with, and seemed to cause the man a lot of pain; Shoto found himself feeling a surprising amount of sympathy for this man who, even if he might be faking it, had such gentle, kind eyes.

"Please, call me Yagi," he finished. He then stretched out a long, long arm and offered Shoto his hand. Shoto—his eyes going to that large hand, then back up to the kind features—returned the gesture without thinking too hard on it.

"Todoroki Shoto," he said, and let the delicate contact shake his hand up and down. He retracted his hand, surreptitiously wiggled the fingers on it, and was relieved when the tingling failed to erupt into outright discomfort. "I apologize if I have caused any upset, particularly during your limited break time—"

"Now, now, didn't your teacher just finish telling you not to apologize?" Yagi-san chided him gently.

Shoto's mouth twisted, and he responded without thinking. "Actually, he just told me to stop debasing myself as a form of penitence, he didn't actually say anything about apologizing."

Immediately, he snapped his mouth closed with a click of his teeth, stomach lurching with panic.

(What was going on with his _mouth? _Was this what a psychotic break felt like? Was this how losing your mind started, with words seeping through it to tumble out of your mouth without your consent, with seeing things that didn't exist and with antagonizing people you knew—that you had been taught, with blood, sweat and countless tears—better than to disrespect?

What was next, hot water and the knowledge of someone else's nightmares on your hands?)

He wasn't given more than a second or two to freak out, however, as his surroundings suddenly echoed with the sound of deep, hearty laughter.

"Hahaha oh, young man, you've got a bit of bite to you, don't you? I'm glad to hear it, haha!"

Shoto stared down at the laughing man, bent at the waist and cackling in his over-large suit, and felt the bubble of building anxiety in his stomach deflate, all at once. The laughter was contagious, and his mouth threaten to curl up at the corners again as he listened to it echoing around him.

"If you two're done, iz almos' the en'a lunch break, you bet'a hurry an' eat!" Mic-sensei's garbled voice cut over the laughter. Shoto turned his chair (wincing at the earsplitting screech that followed) and saw Mic-sensei, chopsticks jutting out of his mouth, holding out an aquamarine lunch box with an upside-down smiley face on its top. Shoto blinked at it, then at Mic-sensei, and at the man's urging, hesitantly accepted the box.

Clearing his throat, he said quietly: "I'm… I have my own lunch, Mic-sensei, and I'm not actually that hun—"

"Nonsense, there's plenty to go around!" Mic-sensei talked over him cheerfully, and Shoto automatically accepted the chopsticks that were shoved into his hand. He looked down at the disposable chopsticks as he realized what had happened, still hesitating, when Aizawa-sensei said:

"Just eat what you can, kid. Whatever you can't manage, I'm sure Hizashi will manage for you. Hell, he's practically a human garbage disposal, anyway."

"Hey, watch who you're insulting, old man, ever heard the saying 'don't bite the hand that feeds you'—"

Yagi-san had his own lunch, Shoto saw, in a large thermos intended for soups, and he caught Shoto's eye when he looked up from it. Smiling, the man urged, "Just try it, Todoroki-kun. Your body will thank you later. As will Shuzenji-san," he added, and at Shoto's confused look, clarified: "Recovery Girl. You don't want to have to explain to her why you collapsed during Hero Training, and I'm positive your teachers would like to avoid that eventuality as well."

They both shuddered, in unison, and shared a smile. Shoto finally picked up his chopsticks, removed the lid to his new lunch box, and ginned quietly to himself at the smiley face drawn on the rice with seaweed and _furikake_.

He had gotten the permission he had hoped for; been exposed to the scrutiny of more than one adult at a time, and walked away from it intact; made a new, tentatively trust-worthy acquaintance; and experienced a touch that didn't hurt for hours after, and only left a memory of warmth on his face.

(The dark skies poured endless tears upon the ground, acid rain splashing down over tile and asphalt and concrete, to gather the filth and the refuse into rapidly filling drains; Shoto imagined his fears, his anxiety and his confusing, increasing lack of control all washed away in the sweeping flood — leaving him wet all the way through, but one, important step closer to being clean.)

It was a good day.


End file.
